How do we negotiate our relationships with digital technologies when taking part in collective origami?
My research question explores what happens when people step away from digital technologies and engage in a shared, creative, and tactile activity. I have used the word ‘negotiate’ to not assume whether there is a positive or negative shift in terms of media habits, attention spans and emotional or behavioural responses to being temporarily offline.
I intend to explore other contexts of culture, such as cultural meanings or contemporary interpretations of the Japanese traditional practice. This allows my research to consider intersectional environments in which origami, whether or not, acts as a means for identity or cultural expression and
personal reflection in a digitally saturated media landscape.
Personal Insight
At work, I began folding small origami cranes during the quiet moments. Then I started to teach my co-workers how to fold them. Seeing how they engaged with their paper cranes made me think about how tactile activities feel rare; most of my co-workers shared that they have not done origami in years, probably since their primary school days.
Folded Dialogue as a prospect
This project intends to investigate how origami, the Japanese art of folding paper into decorative figures, may offer a means of negotiating our relationships with digital technology. A tactile and process-based practice that requires slowness, sustained attention and embodied engagement with material;
the nature of origami contrasts strongly to our accelerated screen-dominated habits. Folded Dialogue hopes to open up possibilities for rethinking how we relate to our digital devices,
to our friends (or strangers), and more importantly, to ourselves.