In the Fall of 1998 we had a show of origami at Xerox PARC, with original designs by a number of well-known origami artists. The artists in the show were David Huffman , Tom Hull , Robert Lang, John Montroll, Chris Palmer , Jeremy Shafer, and Joseph Wu . In addition, we had photographs of models by Takashi Hojyo. Technical origami includes mathematical models such as David Huffman's folded curves, and also representational models, such as Robert Lang's little creatures, that pose and solve difficult folding problems while keeping to more traditional subject matter.
Technical origami is an interesting blend of art, craft, and science.
Compare Wu's expressive baby elephant, Lang's realistic bats, and Montroll's structural cow. Technical origami can even be competitive. Insect folders one-upped each other in realism and complexity, gradually adding antennas, mandibles, second pairs of wings, and finally colored spots on the wings. A number of paperfolders have worked on the problem of maximizing the size of a folded chessboard, light and dark squares formed from opposite sides of the paper, relative to the size of the original square sheet. Many technical origami artists have careers in scientific fields.