Karen Reeds
19 Woodland Drive
Princeton NJ, 08540-1313
United States
609 279-9420
karen.reeds@verizon.net
Disciplines:
History of science and medicine
- Early botany and natural history; Linnaeus & America
- Art and science
- New Jersey medicine
- 20th-century biomedical sciences
History of the book
Origami and creativity
Recent Scholarly Activity:
ORIGAMI CITY
A workshop in everyday creativity
ACM Creativity and Cognition 2009 Conference
Karen Reeds, Workshop Leader
Princeton Research Forum/National Coalition of Independent Scholars
Visiting Scholar, History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania
karen.reeds@verizon.net
www.ncis.org/members/Karen_Reeds/
What you really need to know about the workshop
Origami City is a hands-on, participatory half-day workshop designed for the ACM Creativity and Cognition 2009 Conference in Berkeley, California:
www.creativityandcognition09.org
The workshop will be held on Tuesday, Oct 27. 2009, at the University of California Faculty Club. No origami experience needed. If you can fold a piece of paper in half, you can do this!
Registration closes on September 22, 2009. Registration is limited to 15 people. Sign up at the Conference website. Please bring 7 pieces of identical “found” paper with you–brochures, maps, cards, flyers, menus, wrapping paper (more paper will be provided).
The workshop uses the ancient art of origami to explore many facets of collaboration and creativity. In Part I, we will build an origami city in an hour and a half. Using recycled paper and simple folding techniques, everyone will invent sets of modular building blocks and combine them into forms that evoke a city and its inhabitants.
In Part II (1 hour) we will identify specific skills and aspects of individual and group creativity that have emerged in the process and share ideas for using this prototype workshop in other settings.
INTRODUCTION
Origami—Japanese paperfolding—is a medium that lends itself to collaborative creativity. Although paperfolders ordinarily practice their art by them- selves or in small groups, they often put their skills to the service of larger goals.
Many people know about the practice of folding and displaying a thousand cranes as a visually appealing symbol of peace and compassion. In recent years, folders have also contributed holiday decorations to charitable organizations. They have raised funds for good causes (e.g., tsunami relief) by selling models and holding origami classes. Taking advantage of the cultural, gender, and age neutrality of origami, they have organized large-scale origami events to build community spirit and help overcome strife within their communities.
The Origami City workshop uses paper-folding in a very different way. Taking both origami and the city as metaphors for human inventiveness and collaboration, we will see how, by playing together with the simplest of techniques and materials, we can create something unexpectedly elegant, complex, and evocative. Then we will analyze the process of creation and collaboration to see how to apply this experience to other settings.
WORKSHOP GOALS
• Turn origami into an impromptu act of communal everyday creativity.
• Encourage resourcefulness, experimentation, collaboration, inventiveness, improvisation, and imagination without worrying about technique, equipment, cost of materials, formalities, or end-results.
• Pinpoint the various forms of creativity used in the workshop and suggest ways to bring them to bear on real-life situations.
• Create a prototype workshop and resources to share with others.
• Have fun!
WORKSHOP ACTIVITIES
Part I. (1.5 hours) After getting acquainted, we'll use our “found paper” and other recycled paper and invent simple free-hand “poverty folds” to create sets of modules. We'll combine those building blocks into a paper dream-city of walls, houses, chairs, towers, arcades, arches, shelters, shops, benches, shelves, monuments, platforms, tents, roads, trees, vehicles, people, animals, flowers.... Everyone is free to arrange or re-arrange any part of the city.
Part II. (1 hour) We’ll talk about the process: how each of us came up with a personal set of modules, how others combined and re-combined the modules into larger structures, neighborhoods, and the city as a whole. We’ll talk about the skills we were using (visual, verbal, tactile, spatial, design, social, organizational) to put the city together. We’ll discuss how to re-create the workshop in our own organizations and institutions: to use as an icebreaker, to bring people together, to highlight unexpected skills and resources, to generate new ideas.
After the workshop Our Origami City will remain on display in a public space during the conference. After documenting the city through photographs/video and archiving individual modules, the paper city will be recycled or donated to a local community organization.
WORKSHOP LEADER: Karen Reeds
By profession, I am a historian of science and medicine, exhibition curator, developmental editor, and author. But I was a paperfolder long before that. I have created more origami models than I can count and have published some of them. Since childhood, wherever I go, I find myself teaching origami on the spot to people of all ages and backgrounds. At home, I run the Princeton Public Library Origami Group, which has members from many countries, ranging in age from 5 to 80+. I have given this workshop to both experienced and novice folders.
KEYWORDS Origami, paperfolding, everyday creativity, collaboration, play, fun, improvisation, invention, art, design, 3-dimensional, resourcefulness, recycled materials, community, simplicity, social interaction
Photo: Origami City in progress, 2005. Courtesy Vanessa Gould, Green Fuse Film
Examples of Current Work:
Copyright © 2009 Karen Reeds. All rights reserved.