Prof. Rachel Armstrong, Professor of Experimental Architecture at Newcastle University School of Architecture, Newcastle, UK

Origamy (noun). The circus art of space-time travel.

Origamy (verb). A compulsion to relentlessly explore and push at the limits of existence. The artful and athletic practice of weaving space-time fabrics, which create the conditions for new spaces and events.

Origamy threads are harvested using a copper condenser from space-time dew. They may also be individually plucked from the Implicate Order, the interconnected matrix of the cosmos, using special chopsticks. Space-time distillate is then spun out of this liquid as fibres, which are then woven into geometrically shaped trajectories using a variety of weaving technologies that include sticks and looms.

Space-time fibres can be cast out into the universe by origamers as a transportation network, like artfully launched fishing nets, which enables acrobatically gifted weavers and explorers to slip through space-time using the woven threads and fabric they produce. Origamy therefore provides space-time explorers with access to apparatuses that enable them to travel to other worlds and parallel realities where they can experience alien landscapes and alternative forms of existence. These are not bound by terrestrial notions of space and time but are frequently far stranger, diverse and contrary.

Semantically, origamy is a condensation of three ideas.

Orig(ins). This root refers to the origins of life. It is concerned with the art and science of making life and the craft of living itself.

(G)amy. This stem indicates the game-like qualities of space-time fabric folding. Conway’s Game of Life is invoked, not merely as a form of pattern making, but the physical expressions of the relations, materials and exchanges within the ebb and flow of being. Origamers, use art, science, music, acrobatics and the synthesis of folds to orchestrate life’s processes within the many niches that comprise the universe.

(Gamy) also refers to the ‘gametes’, the seeds of life whose fusion gives rise to new and varied bodies.

Origamer (noun). One who travels through space-time to explore alternative lifeforms and dimensions of existence as a synthesis of many different practices, in which players are required to continually adapt to ever changing circumstances, instigate breath-taking spectacles and to bring back stories from parallel worlds throughout the cosmos.