Not only is this a microscope made of paper, costing a total of fifty cents to produce, it can stand up to being thrown, stomped on and dunked in water. And it comes in a flat-pack of yardstick that takes just a few minutes to assemble. Foldscope by Manu Prakash has the potential to transform the way disease is identified and diagnosed in developing parts of the world.

Demonstrated in a 2012 TED talk, the Foldscope is about the size of a bookmark and based on the principles of origami. It has no mechanical moving parts and it’s cheap enough to disseminate for free and incinerate after use to safely dispose of infectious biological samples.

It might not seem like a lens this tiny would be powerful enough to identify samples of microbes like Giardia or malaria, but the unique optical physics of a spherical lens held close to the eye can magnify samples up to 2,000 times. The lens is about the size of a poppy seed and costs about 17 cents. It can be press-fit into a small hole in the center of the slide-mounting platform on the paper microscope body.

More sophisticated version have multiple lenses or even combinations of colored LED lights powered by a watch battery. Other additions include the capability to project images on the wall of a dark room. Prakash plans to give away 10,000 of the DIY origami microscopes to citizen scientists with the most inspiring ideas for their use. Prospective users can apply for a Foldscope kit by emailing Signup@foldscope.com.

Most artists approach paper as a two-dimensional surface upon which to draw or paint. Others see it in an entirely different way, using it as an architectural material for the most unexpected of three-dimensional works. From wispy, dynamic cut-outs hovering in the air to replicas of entire cities, the works of these 14 (more!) paper artists astonish and amaze.

Eerie Flexible Paper Works by Li Hongbo

What appear to be porcelain or ceramic sculptures stretch and bend in ways you’d never expect – because they’re made from thousands of layers of paper, glued together into accordion-like configurations. Their true nature is only revealed when they are manipulated. Artist Li Hongbo got his inspiration from traditional Chinese toys made from folded and glued pieces of thin paper.

Hand-Cut Paper Sculptures by Nahoko Kojima

A single sheet of paper becomes a leopard, a peacock, a forest, a skull or a masterful life-sized swimming polar bear in the hands of Japanese paper artist Nahoko Kojima. A single piece can take up to six months to create. Byaku, the polar bear, is inspired by the forces of nature.

Amazingly Intricate Paper Scenes by Allen and Patty Eckman

Have you ever seen paper look so dynamic, so infused with life? Allen and Patty Eckman met at Art Center College and soon put their talents to work in collaborative efforts focusing primarily on Native American history. The artists make their own paper pulp, casting it in clay molds to capture this level of detail.

City Maps by Matthew Picton

Matthew Picton creates detailed paper street maps of cities, often using the delicacy of the material to remark upon traumatic events in each location’s past. London in 1940 after Waterloo, Dresden, and Hiroshima all bear the destruction of war in the form of burn marks and tears.

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Some people – and characters – are so recognizable, we can tell who they are just by the outlines of their heads. All it takes is a few basic details, like a hat, a necklace or a certain hairstyle, to identify them. Others are more of a challenge. See for yourself with artist Olly Moss’ ‘Paper Cuts’ series depicting figures from pop culture.

Silhouettes from popular movies and television shows range from instantly identifiable to a bit more puzzling. Can you guess those top characters by their ’90s hairstyles?

Cartoons, game characters and superheroes might be the easiest of all. Who couldn’t identify Mario and Luigi, The Joker, Superman, or the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote?

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A nearly-life-sized, faceted white paper horse bursting out of a wall in an urban setting can’t fail to grab your attention. Bolder and more dynamic than a two-dimensional poster, this 3D papercraft project by Xavier Barrade from the design firm FOAM promotes the song ‘Horses’ by UK-based band Dry the River.

The horses were created in Google Sketchup, then printed, folded and assembled by hand. Each one took about 35 hours to complete. Watch the whole process, from printing to the public’s reaction, in this mesmerizing video.

In cities, where signs and advertisements covering virtually every surface compete for the eyeballs of passersby, posters can be easy to overlook. This installation project doesn’t just draw in curious onlookers, it breaks up the monotony of daily life for pedestrians and integrates some much-needed art into the urban landscape.

Why should out-of-date, unwanted books molder away in the dark corners of libraries, or – far worse – in a landfill? Artists working with books, whether they make it their sole chosen medium or just experiment once in a while, rescue these bound volumes of art and information and fold, cut, carve, glue, assemble or otherwise transform them into amazing sculptures and installations that honor or often transcend the meaning held within the pages.

Jill Sylvia

(images via: jillysylvia.com)

Jill Sylvia meticulously removes the blank entry blocks in ledger books and balance sheets, leaving behind nothing but delicate paper mesh. These geometric skeletons are then used to build amazing replicas of famous buildings like the U.S. Capitol and the White House.

Julia Feld

(images via: holystokes)

Favoring anatomy books, wildlife guides and instruction manuals, artist Julia Feld selectively removes parts of pages to leave behind layered collages, often left within the hardcover to resemble shadow boxes. She sells these intricate works at her Etsy shop, Holy Stokes.

Noriko Ambe

(images via: norikoambe.com)

Multidimensional and lush, the cut-outs by Noriko Ambe almost seem to have occurred simultaneously as part of some strange natural process.  Says Ambe, “Time is essential to my work. Because over time I add more and more paper to a sculpture, the work itself ends up embodying the time taken to create it. The process is as important as the finished product and the simple act of making art every day is important to my practice. Buddhism, although it’s not my intention to show this.”

Bronia Sawyer

(images via: broniart)

Birds, flowers, the waves of the ocean – all of these things and more are evoked simply by curling, folding and coloring the pages of books. Bronia Sawyer creates little paper worlds in which these animals seem to frolic and thrive. “A book is a magical thing, to look at a page of text at a glance gives no clue about its content, but to read the words brings a story to life, it opens your imagination’s floodgates and creates an invisible world in your mind which only you can see.”

Meg Hitchcock

(images via: meghitchcock.com)

Cutting words out of religious texts including the Bible, Koran and Torah, Brooklyn-based artist Meg Hitchcock creates these incredible collages “deconstructing the word of God.” Says Hitchcock, “I select passages from holy books and cut the letters from one passage to form the text of another. For example, I may cut up a passage from the Old Testament of the Bible and reassemble it as a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, or I may use type from the Torah to recreate an ancient Tantric text. A continuous line of text forms the words and sentences in a run-on manner, without spaces or punctuation, creating a visual mantra of devotion.”

Ariana Boussard-Reifel

(images via: arianaboussardreifel.com)

In her series ‘Between the Lines’, artist Ariana Boussard-Reifel has cut each and every word out of the pages of books, leaving behind only the white space, creating patterns that render the books meaningless – or do they?

Maria Fischer

(images via: maria-fischer.com)

Traumgedanken (Thoughts on Dreams) is a 76-page collection of literary, philosophical, psychological and scientific texts which provide insight into dream theories. Amazingly, German artist Maria Fischer has hand-sewn the pages with threads that tie images to certain keywords as sort of physical hyperlinks, which, Fischer says, visualize the confusion and fragility of dreams.

The artist explains, “In addition there are five pages where a significant excerpt from a text of the opposite page is stitched into the paper. It is not legible because the type’s actual surface is inside the folded page. This expresses the mysteriousness of dreams and the aspect of dream interpretation.”

Michael Bom

(images via: bomdesign.nl)

Designer Michael Bom turns books of all sorts into stunningly artistic lamps that retain the character of the book’s content. Some are simply opened, with the pages carefully spaced apart, to act as wall lamps; others are carefully cut and crafted to provide a variety of shapes. Between the pages a viewer can just barely glimpse images and text, which create interesting patterns of dark and light on the lantern surface.

Ann Hamilton

(images via: this is colossal)

Multimedia artist Ann Hamilton has occasionally worked with books throughout her 20-year career including projects in which she connected slices of books at the spine to form shapes as well as large-scale installations of stacked books. The installations form dense towers that, by virtue of the varying thicknesses of the books, take on a painterly quality when viewed from afar.

Alex Queral

(images via: projectsgallery.com)

Alex Queral carves faces into books of faceless names, producing three-dimensional portraits that reach deep within discarded phone books. Most are famous faces like PeeWee Herman and Bob Dylan; some are realistic, while others are crafted in an abstracted style. Queral uses an X-ACTO knife and a pot of acrylic medium to carve and set the books, and then applies a black wash to bring out the features.

Cara Barer

(images via: carabarer.com)

Sculptor Cara Barer bends, folds and curls the pages of unwanted books, sometimes coloring their edges, molding them into forms that suggest organic life like birds, insects and even the undersides of mushrooms. Says Barer, “With the discarded books that I have acquired, I am attempting to blur the line between objects, sculpture, and photography. This project has become a journey that continues to evolve.”

Yvette Hawkins

(images via: bookliciousblog)

From small folded paper pieces to installations of thousands of books that fill entire rooms, the art of Yvette Hawkins is inspired by forms in architecture, grids, maps and molecules as well as the geometric forms found in nature.

“The thing I love about paper is the idea that something so fragile and one dimensional can become structured and sturdy just by folding it. I actually started folding books because I wanted to manipulate the way printed words can be seen, so although i have always loved to work with paper, it was mark making and print that drew me to books.”