Paper and Stick Thing Film

Jan 31 Thu
Film Screening
7:30pm @ The IFF

Ron Resch in his studio with some of his pioneering mathematical origami tesselations.

In the early 1960’s Ron Resch, a self-taught techno-polymath in the Buckminster Fuller tradition, began to explore the structural possibilities of folded paper and articulated sticks. Throughout the decade Resch developed astoundingly original methods for folding vast sheets of paper in elaborate tessellated patterns creating swooping, moldable surfaces that he dreamed of applying on an architectural scale. Like Fuller, Resch wanted to create alternatives to the traditional orthogonal grid, and in his quest for a new building aesthetic he tirelessly explored a kind of embodied geometry. Any shape you can make on a computer, Resch declared you could also make with paper and sticks. Imagine this ethic taken onto a monumental scale. “Paper and Stick Thing Film”  – a rarely screened movie from 1970 –  documents Resch’s researches from the critical period of 1961-1969. Join us for this unique event as part of the IFF’s making space exhibition, our own continuation of the Reschian tradition.

The screening will be followed by a discussion with local spaceframe artist Jacob Dotson, who is now developing his own techniques for linking sticks and cubes in complex geometric and architectural arrays.

 

Ron Resch with students and a massive origami tessellation.