As part of our Yume. Digital Dreams collaboration, Jon Sasaki and I spent the first three months of the project in a creative back and forth exchange, and during that process one day he sent me a couple of audio recordings of origami instructions to try and follow.
I was intrigued by his note “… if you’re into it, just play each recording once and try to follow along, please don’t rewind and review parts.”
So I listened and folded. The forms that I ended up with, may not have been what Jon intended or what either of us thought I’d come up with, but none the less we both felt there was something about these unexpected forms that piqued our interest. Eventually this was the exchange that got us started on our final project, Misconstructions.
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The following are Jon’s initial origami audio recordings, that he sent me on March 20, 2022 — the first day of spring. They are both followed by two views of the forms that I ended up folding.
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After doing the foldings, I went for brisk neighbourhood walk, then came back and wrote the following audio poem, the play of slippages.
Below is a text version of the poem.
the play of slippages
(a response to the audio recordings received from Jon on Sunday, March 20, 2022 — the first day of spring) mis-read misunderstood miscommunications mis-heard misplaced the miss, of slippages in recorded tolds in folds in this spring’s release of cold “do not rewind and review,” you say I don’t I won’t I didn’t no redoing of the exercise no going back no repeat no repair no restoring to what I thought the origami might be no such thing — generative play of what? I wonder. and that’s the thing — to wonder the wondrous with our endless wondering it’s true, I’m not that interested in pinning down or boxing in to try and make something “fit” the clearly defined (which seems to me to never really be about clarity) so, Jon your response, to my response to your drawing of Improvised Kites — your audio recorded folding instructions, to my audio response to your drawing continues our generative play and this brings me back to the folds the creases the seams of our exchanges. I may not know where all this is leading us but truly, it doesn’t matter — I am content to let the “should be” and “need be” filters fall to the floor for there’s something much more intriguing in simply, our back and forth exchange of building an unknown don’t you think?
