Planetary

No, I regret this isn't an entry on Warren Ellis's landmark sci-fi satire comic book series (I'm still figure out a way to make it apply to poi ;), the title is a great excuse to give it a plug. The planetary I'm talking about is the system by which planets rotate around a solar mass and create systems of compound elliptical orbits.

I've been trying to come up with natural phenomenon that match the properties of poi and other object manipulation spinning both as a way to double-check our ideas of poi motion and to see what applications there are for thinking of poi as a mathematical model for other types of motion.

The two models I've found that best fit are the orbits of planets and moons in a solar system and the orbits of electrons in atoms and simple molecules and compounds, though fascinatingly enough they yield very different systems of motion. Atoms yield very chaotic globes in which orbits may freely swing this way and that while planetary motion seems to stabilize more or less along a single axis. Given that the majority of poi spinning occurs with both poi spinning along the same plane (and that the extensions of this, flowers, also occur in the same plane), I think it's worth asking why it is that planetary motion seems to collapse to a single plane like this and the most simple poi movements to learn also seem to possess this property.

The best answer I've been able to come up with after some helpful suggestions from friends on Facebook is mutual attraction--that is planets are attracted to each other as well as to the sun. Likewise, poi heads are attracted both to the hand and the shoulder in the course of poi motion and both are attracted to the center of the Earth. Given the pull they all have on each other, it's little wonder that the most stable plane orientation for them all seems to be all along the same one, rather than the multiple planes one finds in subatomic interactions.

Here, the reason for the multiplicity of planes is that instead of being attracted to each other, electrons are repulsed by each other, making it so their planes are constantly being reformed and shifted over and over again. One could probably approximate this effect by putting magnets in the heads of one's poi that were powerful enough to push away from each other from a few inches in distance or by making it a rule in spinning that plane-bending should always occur when poi are within a few inches of each other. In fact, such a style might really be fascinating to watch.

Neither system is a perfect model for poi, but they both lend themselves to some fascinating spinning thought experiments. In fact, I'm willing to bet that going through planetary rotation models will yield some shapes both familiar and mindblowing to us.

Tech Video Blog #41: Plane-bending exercises, CAP-ellipse transitions, atomic flow

After an exhausting but wonderfully fun and educational weekend at the PEX Summer Festival, I've got a whole bunch of new tech courtesy the patient guidance of Richmond's Lucas Boyd. First up is a plane-bending exercise I've started playing with to explore all three planes by transitioning between them with floats. I've got same-time same direction and same-time opposites so far. After that, some cool CAP effects including a way to transition between CAPS using linear extensions, which also adds one more type of CAP turn to those I demoed in my tutorial a few weeks ago. After a sloppy attempt at an atomic fountain, there's a demo here on how you can use those Yuta-style plane-shifting stalls to introduce atomics into flow.

Off to Spain for a week for NoWhere--peace, kids!

Tech Video Blog #40: Charlie's cube, lots of plane changing

A demo of the cube Charlie demonstrated for me at Wildfire--this takes seven plane shifts to accomplish and works through crossed arms, wall plane, and buzzsaw positions. A real challenge, but a fun one! Next up is a plane-changing pattern that works between opposites same-time and corkscrew into a kind of pendulum stall before reversing itself into the exact same pattern it started as. I really like how the reverse of this pattern is itself, whereas reversing most poi sequences require you to reverse the directions of all your movements. Finally, a plane-changing throw that has a lot in common with the Yuta stalls I've been playing with.

Polyhedron Flowers

A combination of stuff inspired this--first, in pursuit of a unit sphere, I've failed miserably to find a construct that would fit the requirements of it, but many of the experiments I've worked through in the process have proven interesting in their own right. One such example is the 3D pyramid pattern from my last video post, which I suppose is technically a triangular tetrahedron. Taking Cyrille's law that all poi polygons should be symmetrical with two poi, I've been working out ways of using plane-bending and stalls to achieve this end. Here are a couple results:

First, the triangular tetrahedron from my original video, but rendered now with two hands spinning opposite directions same-time. By having them switch planes by 60 degrees at each vertice from the previous two angles they've moved through, resulting in the tetrahedron having two sides each defined by the movement of each hand. The way one draws out this shape is to the left with each hand's path sketched out in a different color. The biggest issue with this pattern is that you don't end at the same point you started with, so you have to draw the pattern multiple times to get back to your start point.


Next is a cube, or I guess square hexahedron. This one I admit cheats a bit and defines two of its planes only by implication, but it does retain a split-time same direction symmetry and can theoretically can be performed by turning the entire body in 90 degree increments at every other vertex. Unlike the tetrahedron, this does return you to your original position.

So, there you go...I can get each shape with one hand at a time currently, but not with both hands together. Give me time, though ;)

Tech Video Blog #38: Atomic CAP (I kid you not), unit sphere theory, stall intensive continues

Starting off with an utterly bizarre pattern--the same-time opposites CAP performed with the extension in wall plane and the antispin petal in corkscrew plane. The idea for this came from a post Dyami made about the idea of a unit sphere on the Tech Poi forum of Tribe.net. I think the concept is a dead-end, but trying to prove it has led to some really interesting patterns, including a 3D triquetra I play with in here. Also, the transition from butterfly top-stall to hybrid that I couldn't include last week is in here and finally I'm working turns into my stall intensive.

MCP on 3D spinning

I posted my blog entry on a 3D unit sphere on my facebook profile and got a really interesting and insightful response from MCP. Check it out:

You're talking about projection. You could look into projecting a sphere onto a flat plane, strangely, there's a lot of information already related to that... ;) Except your sphere is invisible and your stating that there are basically no '3d' patterns that when projected onto a flat plane can't be replicated by 2d ones?

Well for poi, that might be the case, projection has some interesting issues, I'm not sure how it works with a moving point over a sphere, but it might be the case that thou you can replicate the pattern, you might not be able to replicate the exact timing.

Further, yes, a 2d trick can replicate a 3d trick, but only in one plane, so, er, for one plane of viewing. the real 3d trick will also have it's pattern visible for other planes of viewing. ... Read More

Further again, since poi has only one end, hahahahahahahaahaaaaaa, yeah it can't be in two planes at once, like a staff can. So it probably doesn't apply to staffs like you think it will.

And er, also fans, hoops, crosses, s staffs, are 2D props, unlike poi or staff which are 1D so obviously won't work that way.

But even thou they are 1D, if you imagine the line of the poi as a line on the plane. You can still move the plane, rather than spinning the poi in the plane.

Imagine doing a wheel plane horizontal float up at say your ... Read Moreleft side with you left hand. If you imagine the plane as a wall on the side of you, then if you're very skilled and perhaps have stiffish poi, while the poi is still horizontal you manage to pull it to the right side of your body, then you've managed to translate the plane from wheel plane on your left to your right, the plane passing through your body.

Interesting--thinking of 3 dimensional spinning as being the point of start and 2D slices as being projections of it is a fascinating idea. One outcome of this already discussed on the Tech Poi tribe on Tribe.net is flattening the standard figure-8 pattern into a wall-plane infinity loop. I need to work through the concept further, but from what I've played with so far, poi still has a limiting factor that no other tool save rope dart does: it is flexible and therefore must enter follow gravity beneath the hand or the hand must keep the poi in motion. Any attempt to have the hand and poi trace different planes is unstable because of how the hand redirects poi inertia. Granted, people probably once said the same thing about cateyes, but I'm really truly not seeing any possibilities for spinning with one hand in multiple planes simultaneously, in which case the conclusion that 3D spinning ultimately is only either a projection of 3D shapes as MCP here suggests or a 2D slice of such shapes is still the correct one.

A 3D Unit Sphere?

Dyami started up this thread on Tribe about two weeks ago: http://techpoi.tribe.net/thread/37590299-0963-4197-befb-3d7fbcf007ce

In it, he's taking Alien Jon's concept of the unit circle and pondering whether it can be applied to 3D geometry to create a similar family of moves that work within the path of a sphere.

I've been back and forth on this now for the past couple weeks because I can't for the life of me think of any new concepts this would add to the vocabulary of poi, but also not wanting to dismiss the concept completely because there is always the possibility I've become so focused on a given paradigm I can't see my way out of it. The issue with this concept I keep stopping at is that by definition I think poi spinning is two-dimensional.

What do I mean by this? Well, the head of a poi can only be in one direction from the hand anchoring it at any given time and the influence of gravity will always make it settle in one direction. The same issue exists with all spinning tools I'm aware of, from staff to meteor. The movement of a hand guiding a poi always represents a single two-dimensional slice of a three dimensional shape since it can only explore one extension of the shape at any given time. To describe this another way, imagine if your hand could support spinning three poi at once--one in each of the three planes. In this case, you could move your hand in three dimensions in ways that would drastically change the behavior of all three poi.

Put another way, think of poi spinning as being like watching a movie. While what we see on screen is a two-dimensional rendering of a three-dimensional scene, it doesn't seem in the least bit odd to us. The reason for this is that we really see in only two dimensions, but sort out a third by overlapping two two-dimensional images on top of each other and working out the differences between the two. Likewise, when viewing a poi spinner, no viewer can sort more than two dimensions of poi movement at a given time. Poi being spun parallel to the angle of the viewer is seen for all intents and purposes as a straight line. By the same token, any trick done in three dimensions that I can conceptualize will wind up resembling a two dimensional trick that has likely already been named when seen by an audience.

Thus any three-dimensional family of figures one can map out in a "unit sphere" actually wind up just being two-dimensional figures rendered differently for the audience. Or at least that's the conclusion I keep coming to. Anybody else have any success finding 3D moves that don't have 2D corollaries?

Fun with Yuta stalls

It's my dirty little secret that I've been working my ass off on my stalls to make those Yuta-style plane shifting stalls cleaner. While I can do them just fine if my right hand is on bottom, when my left hand is on bottom, the horizontal plane wobbles a depressingly wide amount. An interesting exercise I began playing with today was doing a pair of top-stalls, Yuta-stalling behind me, coming out as though in a bottom stall, bottom stall again, Yuta stalling once again, and coming out as though from a top stall, then reversing the whole thing.

I doubt that makes much sense written out--when I video it, that should help clarify. In the meantime this leads to another cool place: if one approaches the zero points in between the plane shifts from the perspective of being the apex of a pendulum stall/float, some fun possibilities start to emerge, such as using Yuta-style stalls to switch between hybrids--no bullshit!

If one is doing the standard extension vs. isolation hybrid poi in same direction/same time motion, you can use the point where the poi are coming up from the bottom of the circle as the point of stall/float and go straight into a Yuta stall around to the other side of your body. Once there, you just have to let your hands drop to go into another hybrid or you can switch spinning same time/same direction static spin or isolations just like you would with a normal Yuta stall. I haven't practiced a lot in front of mirrors, but so far it looks like switching from hybrid to hybrid is slightly problematic because the poi don't have enough momentum behind them to stay horizontal at the end like they would in a standard Yuta stall, so switching between the standard Yuta stalls and hybrids looks to be the more efficient way of doing this.

Needless to say, this also opens up the possibilities of doing the same thing with floats! :)

Fun with stalls and hybrids

Interesting move combo finds me while I finish up a one-pager on Twitter strategy for work: from same-time opposites do simultaneous top-stalls that stop with the hands right next to each other. Continue the movement of one while isolating the other the opposite direction it just came from, in other words switch to the "split-time" iso vs. extension hybrid with hands together. Playing around after I finish the one-pager shows it's possible, though without a mirror I reckon it's quite sloppy.

Playing with this reminds me of a combo Baz demoed at Firedrums: split-time opposites flower spun in antispin stalls out to a top and bottom stall to one side with the hands separated by a poi length. One continues it's original direction all the other reverses, thus leading to the "same-time" hybrid where the hands move split-time. I try it now without the antispin flower. The hand on bottom does a vertical float and comes back down the same direction as the other hand, thus leading to the same hybrid--cool! :)

While I'm playing with these another 3D pattern starts to form in my head. for this I do a top and bottom stall from split-time opposites, Yuta-style and stall it in corkscrew plane around me to emerge on the other side and rather than going straight back into split-time opposites, I reverse my stalls to make the top hand top stall and bottom hand bottom stall, then horizontal stall back to the other side and allow the poi to complete their paths up and down on the opposite side, thus switching into same-time opposites.

That makes absolutely no sense written out :-P

It's beginning to dawn on me that I should warm up with horizontal as well as vertical plane-bending globes at the beginnings of my practice sessions if I continue to play this much in corkscrew plane.