C, 16.344 (4 minutes 33 seconds)

Best moves found so far: D6,D13,R19,D9,D11,R21,D10,R20

Uses a mixture of Monte Carlo and hill climbing. Could be made to run much faster, I'm sure.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

/*

Best result so far: 16.344
D6,D13,R19,D9,D11,R21,D10,R20

real    4m33.027s
user    4m12.787s
sys 0m1.334s

*/

#define GRID_WIDTH   40
#define GRID_HEIGHT  20
#define GRID_SIZE    (GRID_WIDTH * GRID_HEIGHT)
#define NUM_FOLDS    8
#define MAX_VALUE    (1 << NUM_FOLDS)
#define TARGET_VALUE (MAX_VALUE / 2)

double score_grid(short *g) {
  int i, sum;
  for (i=sum=0; i<GRID_SIZE; i++) sum += abs(*g++ - TARGET_VALUE);
  return sum * 1.0 / MAX_VALUE;
}

void h_fold(short *g, int fold_row) {
  int x, y0, y1;
  if (fold_row<1 || fold_row>=GRID_HEIGHT) return;
  y1 = fold_row * GRID_WIDTH;
  y0 = y1 - GRID_WIDTH;
  while (y0>=0 && y1<GRID_SIZE) {
    for (x=0; x<GRID_WIDTH; x++) {
      g[y0+x] = g[y1+x] = (g[y0+x] + g[y1+x]) >> 1;
    }
    y0 -= GRID_WIDTH;
    y1 += GRID_WIDTH;
  }
}

void v_fold(short *g, int fold_col) {
  int y, x0, x1;
  if (fold_col<1 || fold_col>=GRID_WIDTH) return;
  x1 = fold_col;
  x0 = x1 - 1;
  while (x0>=0 && x1<GRID_WIDTH) {
    for (y=0; y<GRID_SIZE; y+=GRID_WIDTH) {
      g[y+x0] = g[y+x1] = (g[y+x0] + g[y+x1]) >> 1;
    }
    x0--;
    x1++;
  }
}

void print_grid(short *g) {
  int i=0, checksum=0;
  while (i<GRID_SIZE) {
    checksum += *g;
    printf("%3X",*g++);
    if ((++i) % GRID_WIDTH == 0) putchar('\n');
  }
  if (checksum != GRID_SIZE * TARGET_VALUE) printf("Bad total: %d\n",checksum);
}

void init_grid(short *g) {
  int i;
  static short *start_grid=0, *sg;
  if (!start_grid) {
    char *src = "11010110100011100000001000110001001101010111000100100100000101100000101111000010"
                "10110011111011111101101011111001000010101010110111000101000001011111101000011001"
                "10000111111001111011100101101001101100001110001101001011010011011110101000011100"
                "00110010100010100010110101001100110001100100111010000110100110001000110000111101"
                "01000001110000101000110101011011101010111110101010110000001011010010000011101000"
                "11111011111100100100100010111010111111000101011110000100111111111000110101101101"
                "00110100010111101111000011011010000110001001101010010101110010110111101001011111"
                "10110001101100001110010100110100010011011110100110000100100111101101000010011001"
                "00011100110100111101000000001000010100001101001011000101101001000100111100011010"
                "00010110001110011111100011101111011100111001110011111011010010000100101111101001";
    start_grid = malloc(GRID_SIZE * sizeof(short));
    for (i=0; i<GRID_SIZE; i++) start_grid[i] = (src[i]&1)<<NUM_FOLDS;
  }
  sg = start_grid;
  for (i=0; i<GRID_SIZE; i++) *g++ = *sg++;
}

double evaluate(int *moves) {
  short *grid;
  double score;
  int i, f;
  grid = malloc(GRID_SIZE * sizeof(short));
  init_grid(grid);
  for (i=0; i<NUM_FOLDS; i++) {
    f = moves[i];
    if (f>0) v_fold(grid,f);
    else h_fold(grid,-f);
  }
  score = score_grid(grid);
  free(grid);
  return score;
}


double optimize_folding(int *moves, double score) {
  int opt_cycle, i, which_fold, new_move, f1, f2, t;
  double s;
  
  for (opt_cycle=0; opt_cycle<1000; opt_cycle++) {
    for (i=0; i<NUM_FOLDS; i++) {
      which_fold = random() % NUM_FOLDS;
      do {
        if (random()&1) new_move = random() % (GRID_WIDTH-1) + 1;
        else new_move = -(random() % (GRID_HEIGHT-1) + 1);
      } while (moves[which_fold]==new_move);
      t = moves[which_fold];
      moves[which_fold] = new_move;
      s = evaluate(moves);
      if (s>score) moves[which_fold] = t;
      else score = s;
    }
    for (i=0; i<NUM_FOLDS; i++) {
      f1 = random() % NUM_FOLDS;
      do {
        f2 = random() % NUM_FOLDS;
      } while (f2==f1);
      t = moves[f1];
      moves[f1] = moves[f2];
      moves[f2] = t;
      s = evaluate(moves);
      if (s>score) {
        t = moves[f1];
        moves[f1] = moves[f2];
        moves[f2] = t;
      }
      else score = s;
    }
  }
  
  return score;
}

void show_moves(int *moves) {
  int i, m;
  for (i=0; i<NUM_FOLDS; i++) {
    m = moves[i];
    printf("%c%d%c",(m>0)?'R':'D',abs(m),((i+1)%NUM_FOLDS)?',':'\n');
  }
}

int main() {
  int i, j, moves[NUM_FOLDS], save_moves[NUM_FOLDS];
  double score, best_score = 1.0E+99;
  
  srandomdev();
  for (i=0; i<400; i++) {
    for (j=0; j<NUM_FOLDS; j++) {
            if (random()&1) moves[j] = random() % (GRID_WIDTH-1) + 1;
            else moves[j] = -(random() % (GRID_HEIGHT-1) + 1);
        }
        score = optimize_folding(moves, 1.0E+99);
        if (score<best_score) {
            best_score = score;
            for (j=0; j<NUM_FOLDS; j++) save_moves[j]=moves[j];
        }
    }
  printf("%.3lf\n",best_score);
  show_moves(save_moves);
  return 0;
}