I've now officially moved!
My tech blog can now be accessed at http://www.drexfactor.com/weirdscience
If you've been following me on Blogger, I highly recommend you subscribe to me at this new location as I won't be updating this blog from here on out. Thanks, all!
Peace,
Drex
Monday, November 9, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Musings on hybrids and soon to move
So I know there's been comparatively few updates recently and this has been especially frustrating given that some updates have disappeared in the past couple days as I've tried to work out why my blogger account has stopped feeding videos to my iTunes feed.
The good news is these issues are nearing their end. The bad news is that it means I'm having to transfer all my content over to my own site. This process should be done by the end of the week, but in the meantime has meant I'm cutting and pasting a year's worth of video and written blogs to a different site. It's extremely time-consuming and annoying, but at least I won't have to worry about the technology failing on me and I can expand the content however I see fit.
That aside, Alien Jon recently posted a message on the Home of Poi forums asking for requests for poi tutorials and he's gotten a lot of good responses--one of which stuck out to me in a way I wasn't anticipating.
While I got down all the isolation vs. extension hybrids of the unit circle model months ago, I've been struggling to find an adequate way to describe a good use for them. Indeed, I rarely find I use them in flow spinning at all, though the unit circle grid hints tantalizingly at the potential for the model to offer easy flow between hybrids.
Admittedly, this is a narrow interpretation of the concept, however. After months of trying to understand Olive's post on "hybrid math", a five-minute conversation with him at Firedrums cleared up my confusion and I suddenly realized that hybrids existed in a far greater depth and scope than I had imagined. And it's based upon this understanding that I throw out an interesting idea: what if hybrids can be thought of as the "transition tools" between timing and direction combinations?
One of the fundamental properties all hybrids seem to possess is that they can be viewed as occupying two different timing and direction combinations simultaneously--the standard hybrid of iso vs. extension with hands together can be viewed as either split-time same direction if one continues the motion of the poi or same-time same direction if one continues the motion of the the hands. Likewise, the triquetra polyrhythm hybrid vs. extension can be viewed as either same-time opposites from the perspective of the poi or same-time same direction from the perspective of the hands.
Viewed in this light, hybrids then become the "missing link" tool that beginner and intermediate spinners constantly ask for to ease their flow. This begs a few interesting questions: are there any hybrids that do not fit this paradigm, ie, cannot be viewed as at least two different timing and direction combinations? Also: is it a given that we go through a hybrid to switch between these timing and direction changes or are there other methods?
More on this to follow...
The good news is these issues are nearing their end. The bad news is that it means I'm having to transfer all my content over to my own site. This process should be done by the end of the week, but in the meantime has meant I'm cutting and pasting a year's worth of video and written blogs to a different site. It's extremely time-consuming and annoying, but at least I won't have to worry about the technology failing on me and I can expand the content however I see fit.
That aside, Alien Jon recently posted a message on the Home of Poi forums asking for requests for poi tutorials and he's gotten a lot of good responses--one of which stuck out to me in a way I wasn't anticipating.
While I got down all the isolation vs. extension hybrids of the unit circle model months ago, I've been struggling to find an adequate way to describe a good use for them. Indeed, I rarely find I use them in flow spinning at all, though the unit circle grid hints tantalizingly at the potential for the model to offer easy flow between hybrids.
Admittedly, this is a narrow interpretation of the concept, however. After months of trying to understand Olive's post on "hybrid math", a five-minute conversation with him at Firedrums cleared up my confusion and I suddenly realized that hybrids existed in a far greater depth and scope than I had imagined. And it's based upon this understanding that I throw out an interesting idea: what if hybrids can be thought of as the "transition tools" between timing and direction combinations?
One of the fundamental properties all hybrids seem to possess is that they can be viewed as occupying two different timing and direction combinations simultaneously--the standard hybrid of iso vs. extension with hands together can be viewed as either split-time same direction if one continues the motion of the poi or same-time same direction if one continues the motion of the the hands. Likewise, the triquetra polyrhythm hybrid vs. extension can be viewed as either same-time opposites from the perspective of the poi or same-time same direction from the perspective of the hands.
Viewed in this light, hybrids then become the "missing link" tool that beginner and intermediate spinners constantly ask for to ease their flow. This begs a few interesting questions: are there any hybrids that do not fit this paradigm, ie, cannot be viewed as at least two different timing and direction combinations? Also: is it a given that we go through a hybrid to switch between these timing and direction changes or are there other methods?
More on this to follow...
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Flow practice 9-28-09
A gig over the weekend afforded me the opportunity to pull out a pair of flag poi I hadn't used in forever and realized a lot of my tech worked even with the tails. The first minute and a half of this is choreo I'd developed for a different performance up in Philly this past weekend that didn't come together. After that it's all improv and a whole lot of fun :)
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Video: G spins fire poi Sunday night at Burning Man 2009
An impromptu fire jam at Hookah Dome a few hours after the temple burn brought out some of the best and the brightest on the playa. Here is G doing a ton of plane-bends and stall shifting, as well as a brief glimpse of some of the diagonal planes he and Alien Jon have been working on.
Video Tech Blog #48: split-time stall switches, plane-shifted CAPs, double staff
My apologies if you read this in blog form or are subscribed through my feedburner feed--for some reason iTunes has not been posting updates to my blog for weeks and I'm finally at the end of my options, so I've deleted every post leading up to the point where iTunes stopped keeping track of my feed and I am hoping that when I reenter my old entries that they will appear once again on iTunes. This does, however, mean that you're about to get 7 entries you've seen before. Once again...I apologize :-P
After an awesome couple weeks hanging out with some of my favorite poi spinners on the east coast, I've gotten to learn a lot about split-time stall shifts in the style of Rastaxel. Insignia has been taking these and adding a plane-bent flourish in the middle. I showed this pattern to Baz and he came up with an over the arm stall. I added a Yuta stall shift to Baz's motion and though it looks sloppy I've been having a lot of fun with it. I think I may have prematurely christened the spherical CAP--I described it by the pattern it adds up to rather than its component pieces. With that in mind, here is a possible approach one could use to create spherical CAPs by isolating the poi heads when entering a Yuta stall switch. Finally, a couple fun double staff constructions based upon my own monkeying around and an interesting plane-bent idea Lucas showed me over the weekend. See you guys after Burning Man!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
A double dose of tasty tech, Part 2: featuring Insignia
Two weeks ago at Boom Boat, Insignia showed off some spherical CAP ideas that really sent me back to the drawing board to see what was possible. Here are some of those ideas rendered, plus some more fun stall switching patterns and head orbit play.
Monday, August 24, 2009
A double dose of tasty tech, Part 1: featuring Baz
I've been lucky enough that the past couple weeks I've gotten to catch up with some of my favorite east coast poi spinners and gotten to shoot a little bit of video of some of the cool tricks they've been working on. Here's the first of two videos: Baz Simon doing some plane-bending tech at our friend Aaron's (Fractal) wedding.
Spherical or plane-bent CAPs?
The past few weeks in my video blog, I've played with the concept of taking our current understanding of elliptical CAPs and translating them into 3-D shapes. I dubbed the concept "spherical CAPs" but I'm now starting to question if it's either accurate or actually descriptive of the concept. Here's why:
I've blogged before about the mathematics of CAPs (or at the very least referenced what someone else wrote on the topic ;) and have finally come to understand that the concept is rooted not necessarily in the idea of having a repeatable "move" per-se, but in the idea of having multiple segments that incorporate different moves to form new patterns--hence "assembly patterns." This now explains to me why elliptical CAPs are referred to as such: they are collections of ellipses that are assembled into larger patterns.
So are the "spherical" patterns that have been showing up in my videos made up of spheres? Nope, they're named via the opposite approach: the fact that the path of the hands trace out the wireframe of a sphere. If, for example, one where to approach using two of the 3D CAP patterns I've played with and transition between two 3D shapes, one could then make the argument that you'd created an assembly pattern made up of multiple spherical shapes, but also by that logic, moving between repeatable patterns with unit circle hybrids would likewise qualify. Perhaps we could approach the concept of a "unit sphere" the same way--not as a basic unit of movement but as a basic element of 3D CAP patterns.
Food for thought...
I've blogged before about the mathematics of CAPs (or at the very least referenced what someone else wrote on the topic ;) and have finally come to understand that the concept is rooted not necessarily in the idea of having a repeatable "move" per-se, but in the idea of having multiple segments that incorporate different moves to form new patterns--hence "assembly patterns." This now explains to me why elliptical CAPs are referred to as such: they are collections of ellipses that are assembled into larger patterns.
So are the "spherical" patterns that have been showing up in my videos made up of spheres? Nope, they're named via the opposite approach: the fact that the path of the hands trace out the wireframe of a sphere. If, for example, one where to approach using two of the 3D CAP patterns I've played with and transition between two 3D shapes, one could then make the argument that you'd created an assembly pattern made up of multiple spherical shapes, but also by that logic, moving between repeatable patterns with unit circle hybrids would likewise qualify. Perhaps we could approach the concept of a "unit sphere" the same way--not as a basic unit of movement but as a basic element of 3D CAP patterns.
Food for thought...
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Video Tech Blog #47: more CAP plane-bending and CAP transition theory
At boomboat over the weekend, Christian pointed out to me that all my CAP plane-bending experiments had overlooked a very obvious possibility: performing a CAP in horizontal plane. This, it turns out, is also an awesome transition to diagonal plane CAPs. Also, A bizarre property of CAP transitions into full-arm movements. It turns out that the four basic combinations of timing and directions have three transition points with the most common CAPs, so halving a flower gives you three of the four combinations--not two. Any mathematicians can tell me why?
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Vulcan Tech Blog: objects in flight
Not as heavy on poi, but still hella fun to watch. Noel, Greg, and Jordan transferring balls in square patterns is probably my favorite moment of this video.
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