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StillnessArt fact

Origami, from the Japanese ori, 'folding', and kami, 'paper', is the art of folding paper into figures. Modern origami usually starts from a single square sheet with no cuts or glue, so every shape, from a crane to a dragon, comes from folds alone.

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Paper folding grew up separately in Japan, China and Europe. In Japan, folded paper wrappings became part of formal etiquette among the samurai class in the 14th and 15th centuries, and the oldest known book of origami instructions, Hiden senbazuru orikata ('The secret of folding a thousand cranes'), appeared in 1797. In the 20th century Akira Yoshizawa invented wet-folding, which dampens thick paper so it can be moulded into curves, and his system of dotted lines and arrows became the standard way to draw folding instructions. Folding turned out to be serious mathematics too: a sheet of paper can divide any angle into three equal parts, which is impossible with a compass and straight edge alone. The Miura fold, invented by the Japanese astrophysicist Kōryō Miura, opens with a single pull and was used for the solar panels of the Space Flyer Unit satellite in the 1990s.

Türkçe oku
Origami, kâğıdı katlayarak figürler yapma sanatıdır; adı Japonca ori (katlamak) ve kami (kâğıt) sözcüklerinden gelir. Bugünkü origamide genellikle tek bir kare kâğıt kullanılır, kesilmez, yapıştırılmaz; turnadan ejderhaya her biçim yalnızca katlarla ortaya çıkar.

Kâğıt katlama Japonya'da, Çin'de ve Avrupa'da birbirinden bağımsız gelişti. Japonya'da katlanmış kâğıt ambalajlar, 14. ve 15. yüzyıllarda samuray sınıfının resmî görgü kurallarının bir parçası oldu. Bilinen en eski origami talimat kitabı, “Bin turna katlamanın sırrı” anlamına gelen Hiden senbazuru orikata, 1797'de yayımlandı. 20. yüzyılda Akira Yoshizawa, kalın kâğıdı nemlendirip kıvrımlı biçimler vermeye yarayan ıslak katlamayı buldu; kesikli çizgi ve oklarla çizdiği şemalar da bugün katlama talimatlarının ortak dili hâline geldi. Katlamanın ciddi bir matematiği de var: Pergel ve cetvelle yapılamayan bir iş, herhangi bir açıyı üç eşit parçaya bölmek, kâğıt katlayarak yapılabilir. Japon astrofizikçi Kōryō Miura'nın geliştirdiği Miura katlaması tek bir çekişle açılır ve 1990'larda Space Flyer Unit uydusunun güneş panellerinde kullanıldı.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Origami
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In 1723 Bach became director of music for the main churches of Leipzig. The job meant a cantata, a piece for choir, soloists and orchestra, for nearly 60 Sundays and feast days a year. In his first year he composed most of them new, week after week, alongside some reworked earlier pieces.

Bach's official title was Thomaskantor, music master of St Thomas School, and he held the post from 1723 until his death in 1750. Each cantata had to suit that Sunday's Bible readings and was performed during the service at St Thomas or St Nicholas church. His first annual cycle began on 30 May 1723; alongside the new works he restaged and adapted some cantatas from his earlier post in Weimar. Music paused for most of Advent and Lent, the quiet seasons before Christmas and Easter. Senior pupils of the school sang in the choir and helped rehearse and copy out the parts by hand. His obituary, written by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel and a former pupil, speaks of five complete annual cycles. More than 200 of his cantatas survive; many others are lost.

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Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican between 1508 and 1512 standing on a tall wooden scaffold with his head tilted back, not lying down as is often imagined. The ceiling, about 35 by 14 metres, holds more than 300 figures.

Pope Julius II commissioned the ceiling. Michelangelo saw himself as a sculptor rather than a painter and accepted reluctantly; the contract was signed on 8 May 1508. He rejected the first scaffold, which hung on ropes through holes in the vault, and had a freestanding one built instead. His early biographers Giorgio Vasari and Ascanio Condivi both say he worked standing, and Vasari describes the discomfort of painting with his head bent backwards for so long. The lying-down version comes from another writer of the time, Paolo Giovio. Michelangelo is thought to have joked about the strain in a comic poem to a friend, with a sketch in the margin of a figure painting overhead. The ceiling was painted in fresco, on patches of fresh plaster laid each day, and the modern restoration mapped each of these daily sections. It was unveiled on 31 October 1512.

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In true fresco, the painter brushes pigment mixed only with water onto fresh, wet lime plaster. As the plaster dries, it reacts with the air and binds the colour into the wall itself, which is why frescoes can last for centuries.

Fresco means “fresh” in Italian. Wet lime plaster absorbs carbon dioxide from the air and slowly turns into calcium carbonate, a kind of limestone, trapping the pigment as it hardens. The plaster sets within the day, so each morning only as much fresh plaster is laid as can be painted that day. This patch is called a giornata, Italian for “a day's work”, and its faint seams often remain visible. A mistake means chipping the plaster off and starting again. Some colours, especially blues such as ultramarine, did not work in wet lime, so they were added later on dry plaster, a method called secco (“dry”); paint applied this way flakes off more easily. Among the oldest known true frescoes are Minoan wall paintings from Crete and Santorini of the second millennium BC. Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel in Padua and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling are famous later examples.

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