A student artist used origami to create a dress that mimics how information is stored and retrieved in a quantum memory drive.

Origami Memory Dress

Audrey Zhang, an art and archaeology major at Princeton University, created a piece called “Origami Memory Dress,” which combines tactile art with engineering. Zhang worked alongside Glaucio Paulino, PhD, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the university, and his research team to weave the intricate origami patterns into the garment’s structural design.

The specific technique used in the piece is called a Miura-ori tessellation, which is also called “shape-memory origami” because it’s folded into a unique structure that allows the material to hold and return to its form even after it’s compressed.

Also known as the Miura fold, the pattern has practical engineering applications. In space technology, for example, the technique is used in systems like foldable solar panels and satellites that deploy efficiently once in orbit.

The Origami Memory Dress is artistically representative of a quantum hard drive that holds the accumulated information of every person throughout human history. The patterns were constructed from lightweight materials like copy paper and drew inspiration from forms found in nature, such as dragonflies and butterfly wings.

The dress’s structure was also modeled after a butterfly to symbolize metamorphosis. Zhang even considered constructing the dress from chitin, a natural material found in insect wings, but didn’t due to the material’s high cost.

Zhang tested different types of paper and fold sizes to analyze texture, color, thickness, and visual effects. The artist also used this technique in her senior thesis when she created a conceptual design for an interstellar bioship called StarSail, which used the same type of folding geometry in its sails.

“Incorporating origami into my work has enabled me to iterate through engineering designs in a tactile way,” said Zhang. “Origami also taught me how to give new form and properties to materials like paper, an idea I plan to explore more in my art.”