The Fold and the Beautiful
This domain name has a double meaning: this site contains my personal code and it also happens to be the name of my late Uncle’s relatively infamous algorithm. (Elsewhere on this site I have a description of it.) My uncle came up with the algorithm at a pretty young age (to get out of taking a test) and since had gone onto to less famous endeavors.
One of those passions was Computational origami (origami sekkei). While Huffman Coding is in web images, digital music, fax machines and VCRs, David Huffman’s foldings are only in my cousin’s den.
But out of the blue, an article appeared in last Tuesday’s New York Times (June 22, 2004, page D2) on his artful foldings. It included color photographs of three of his works. It is also on their (registration required) website.
He would graph complex equations on stiff plastic laminate then score along those curves. With a gentle bending at those scores, a 3 dimensional piece of art would snap into place. No cuts, no tape, no glue. With no stress on the paper/plastic. A perfect equation as it were.
He had developed a way of analyzing graphical equations to determine whether they would yield a perfect (“zero curvature”) surface. Mindbendingly detailed mathematical analysis, but it yielded mindbendingly beautiful art.