Today, origami is being used to research a range of new applications that includes micro-medical devices, robotics, deployable structures, space exploration and even spiral galaxy formation in cosmology. This talk will discuss some of the ideas and inspiration behind my gallery based work that includes contemporary ideas in science, perception, complex systems, quantum physics and philosophy under an over-arching theme of interconnectedness. I will also briefly discuss my ongoing collaboration with Guangbo Hao, Senior Lecturer in Electrical Engineering, UCC, researching how origami can inform robotics education and also how folding paper continues to challenge me as an artist on many levels.
Alex Pentek is an Irish artist who has been awarded over 30 large scale public realm sculpture commissions in Ireland, UK, Canada and Australia and most recently in Washington DC, US. His gallery based practice explores contemporary scientific ideas in temporary mediums such as folded paper and sound performance which have been exhibited in Ireland, UK, Germany, US and Australia including solo exhibitions in the RHA in 2018 and Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre 2019. He is involved in an ongoing collaborating with Dr. Guangbo Hao, UCC to research how origami can inform robotics education.
Loquium is a new online lecture series looking at the materialised forms of sculptural practices and the knowledge they produce. We hope to delve into the differences in artistic material enquiry and its material possibilities. We look to develop a new vocabulary to engage in discourses around how these sculptural enquiries lead into unknowable territories and spaces of not knowing where often the artistic research is not separable from the art itself and how artists themselves bring new thinking into the world that is often beyond traditional academic understanding.
