wow, I recently arrived back from 7OSME. What an enriching and enlightening experience. So wonderful to see such incredible work from the growing network of origami related research. Many presentations featured math, and lots of it. Perhaps the best lecture of the program (related to my query) was Tom Hull’s lecture on self-foldability. Not only was the topic super intriguing, but he did an amazing job of explaining the math, it was also super funny! It made me realise that the math was accessible, and not too esoteric. It also made me realise that I’d like to study math to translate my intuitions of origami into communicable ideas and software. I continued math all the way through high school and would have done more had I followed architecture, however I went to art school and learned how to further my intuitive skills instead.
Now I realise that math is a huge field, so I’m looking to tailor my study towards what I’ll need for origami, particularly kinetic origami, rigidity theory etc. I’m wanting to translate the ideas into software, or work with a software engineer and translate the ideas to them. My question is, has anyone been through a similar experience of learning, and could anyone give me some keywords or hints for the type of math I should be looking at? cheers, and all the best, Matthew