Categories
inspiration

Sewn Paper Sculptures

If you’ve been following this blog even remotely, you might have sussed my interest in papercraft and recycled materials, possibly partly due to my own artistic limitations. I’m in awe of artists who can do what I can’t – produce highly visual and sculptural pieces, rather than simply text, and particularly transform paper, something I use purely as a medium to scribble on and create artifices, into more then just a 2D vessel.

Continuing in this tradition, I’d like to share the work of Jennifer Collier, spied via the good folks at Fast Co Design. Using a sewing machine, she stitches found pieces of paper as if they were cloth, into all manner of three-dimensional sculptures. Shoes, clothes, everyday objects, even a camera and a typewriter – I think there’s a delicious absurdity in crafting a model of a tool, using the material it usually spews out.

Categories
inspiration

Psychedelic Paper Sculptures

Jen Stark creates fantastical, multicoloured paper sculptures which transgress the humble medium, composing simple sheets into three-dimensional works of art using every spectrum of the rainbow. The intricate layers, the shapes they form, and the sheer vibrancy of her work are mesmerising – what’s more, they’re all hand-cut. Perhaps it’s not wise to delve too deep into her catalog, if you have any pressing work to do…

Categories
inspiration

Pick a card, any card…

Our former bookleteer blogger, Karen Martin, wrote about the effects of using different types of paper when printing eBooks in a previous post, “Paper Selection“, but having just rediscovered a few examples, I thought I’d share them with you again.

Carmen Vela Maldonado created these lovely eBooks by experimenting with different coloured paper and card, as well as cutting out parts and using scanned scraps of paper as backgrounds. So much more impressive then using standard paper, they add a whole new dimension of texture and depth, engaging the reader on a higher level. “A Manifesto for Black Urbanism” by Paul Goodwin, which uses black ink on black card and faint images of urban environments printed onto tracing paper, looks stunning. The map overlays used in “Dusk”, by Saki, also work really well – visual place-marks to a tale defined by its location and references to surrounding areas.

 

Categories
inspiration

Programmable Origami

Alan Chamberlain, one of our PU&P Augmented Reading participants, posted a link to the bookleteer Facebook page about a programmable surface that has been created by researchers at MIT and Harvard. The composite material which looks pretty much like a piece of paper can fold itself into a number of predetermined shapes (in this case a boat, a plane and a tent) when an electric current is passed through it. The ‘paper’ contains a number of foil actuators to make it fold and tiny electromagnets to ensure it stays folded.

Researchers believe that one application might be to create containers that can change their size to adjust to the amount of liquid being poured into to them. Another might be to make StoryCubes that can expand and shrink depending on how much is written on them or how many people are collaborating. But they probably haven’t thought of that specific use yet..

Read more about it on wired.com where you can also see a video of it in folding action.. (Thanks Alan!)