520: Blackstar

January 12, 2016January 12, 2016 | wonko

Having pre-ordered the new album by David Bowie, I was delighted when it arrived in my postbox yesterday morning (Monday 11 January 2016). Much hyped, I put it on loud, in high rotation for the day, each listen affirming a new favorite Bowie Album.

In the afternoon we went grocery shopping, to return home to the news that Bowie had passed on, after a long and private battle with cancer.

Few aspects of the music industry were not influenced by this artist.

His music woke me up as a teenager, a welcome relief from the bang and twang that monopolised the music charts. Continue reading →

Bunch

November 15, 2015December 8, 2015 | wonko

Faced with a brief hiatus before marking became crippling, I set about to re-master the free form folding technique of the Sato Rose:

I have found many guides for Naomiki Sato’s rose that do precise pre-folding, invariably I get lost or end up with a bloom that is so geometrically perfect that it is not very realistic, so went searching for a technique that allowed for natural bloom variation.

Two years ago (or thereabouts) I had mastered the knack of turning a free-form Sato rose, but then lost it – not sure why. I mangled dozens of sheets of paper trying to get it back to no success. “Free form” is a term I use to describe a process that has nearly NO landmarks – you fold it to about here, then back a little and so on. With such a complicated fold, mistakes early ruin the later fold as they compound out of control. Continue reading →

Folding Algorithms – Sato Rose

January 20, 2014May 17, 2014 | wonko

Much of Origami is algorithmic (algorithm = procedural solution to a problem). A rabbit ear is an algorithm, one knows how to fold it on a corner – double rabbit ear is the same solution, folded two simultaneously. Petal fold is also a standard maneuver which got me thinking of the Sato Rose algorithm.

I like this algorithm particularly because of the free-form nature of much of the folding, and the way it seems to “fit” a pentagon. I decided to use the same folding algorithm but try it with other regular polygons – I tried triangle(3), square(4), pentagon(5), hexagon(6), heptagon(7), octagon(8), nonagon(9) but gave up on the decagon(10).

The algorithm involves “nearly” bisecting each vertex to form an echo shape at the centre of the sheet – you then halve that internal echo to create a slightly offset echo and use that as the basis of a “kawasaki twist” Continue reading →

464: Say it with Flowers

December 24, 2013September 19, 2015 | wonko

In our previous house I had a rose garden – I planted and maintained 42 rose bushes, lovingly collected cow poo, mulched, pruned and relentlessly sprayed them to combat the Queensland climate’s unsuitability for growing them. I also was a member of the Queensland Rose Society so occasionally displayed blooms at shows and in competitions, gaining an appreciation of the ‘technical appreciation’ of a bloom’s structure, symmetry and form. Needless to say I love roses.

I have long been fascinated and frustrated by the modified Kawasaki Rose II in equal parts, it’s mathematics is mind-buggering and all the techniques I had been exploring contained so much pre-creasing that the resultant bloom is mashed and dented beyond recognition. This variation, designed by Naomiki Sato is quite the loveliest thing of this ilk on the planet at the moment in my opinion. Continue reading →