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 :)

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.

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.

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?

Video Tech Blog #46: Old-school tech and quarter-beat stalls

Starting off with a couple tricks I'd consider to be a little bit older school style tech than I usually work with--the first is inspired by rope dart tricks that shoot the head off in the opposite direction it's been wrapped in. Next is a trick that uses releases to transition from meltdown to behind-the-back waistwraps and back. This is sketchy! Next, in order to get down the spherical CAPs I've been working on the past few weeks, I've been doing drills to get my hands used to doing quarter-beat stalls in same-time opposites. Last, a staff transition to get into opposites behind the back. I'm sure there are better ways of doing it, but this is what monkeying with it on Sunday got me to. If you know better, ways, please point me to a video!

Flow Practice 8-8-09

Waiting for an oil change gave me a perfect chance to try out some flow! Not terribly dancey or big in footwork, but there are some cool experiments with pendulums, wraps, and LOTS of plane-changing here. Not all of it works terribly well, but there are some cool transitions in here. Also--some attempts at dropping the spherical CAP pattern into flow. Enjoy!

Video Tech Blog #45: airwraps and dissecting the spherical CAP

I'm trying to think if there are two more different skills I could have spent the last week playing with. Among the gaps in my knowledge are airwraps and how to get out of hyperloops. This week I finally set down to learn how this type of motion works and by and large the practice has been paying off. Also I've spent a lot of time working on the spherical CAP pattern I theorized about last week, breaking it down to each incremental movement. I'm having some success with it, but all indications show that it's going to take a while--especially given how difficult it is proving to keep many of the movements in-plane.

Video Tech Blog #44: plane-bending pendulum stalls, spherical CAP theory

Based upon a pendulum stall trick Baz taught me a few months ago, here's a variant that makes use of plane-bending out of stalls. Also: I've been working a lot more with elliptical CAP patterns and have a presentable version of the split-time opposites pattern. Finally, based upon Charlie's responses to my video on CAPs and plane-bending last week, a little bit of theory and three approaches to taking elliptical CAP patterns to spherical CAP patterns. One is (very roughly) demoed. Give me another week and we'll see if I can put together the others cleanly.

Tech Video Blog #43: Plane-bending with CAPs

So regrettably these didn't come out as clean as I'd hoped, but I think there's still enough here to give folks some ideas of what's possible when you combine CAPs and plane-bending. I know there's a lot of stuff that could have been demoed but wasn't--I'll hopefully fill in gaps as time goes on or if this gives some of you out there ideas, I'd love to see some responses.

Tech Video Blog #42: diagonal planes and Noel's double-staff trick

A highly fortuitous meeting with Alien Jon in Barcelona led to the first trick here, combining plane-bending with a concept I was unfamiliar with called diagonal planes. Currently I can only plane bend with it or turn, but I suspect other tricks will begin to emerge using these techniques. Second, at Wildfire Noel showed me a double-staff trick wherein one alternates one hand doing antispin and the other hand sliding straight across the body along its own axis which creates an 8-step move that one can easily break out of into any number of other patterns. It was a bit of a mindfuck for me, but I taught it to a gentleman at NoWhere and it helped me finally get the motion down smoothly (or at least as smoothly as a guy who has only done double staff for a few months can get it). More to come!

Plane-bending with CAPs

Partially based upon Noel's video of G and partially just random messing around, I've been trying to break CAPs out into all the different zero points along their transit. It turns out that it can be split into zero points if you're tricky enough with your motion at four different points: the top and bottom of the cycle and the middle either during the antispin motion (relatively easy) or in the extensions (a lot harder). Playing with this, I've been able to switch between the standard "opposites split-time" motion in wheel plane to the wall-plane "split-time same direction" motion I'm rocking in the photo below. The transition can be done at any of the four zero points and hopefully this week I'll be able to work up a video detailing the transitions.

Plane bending: the future is here!

G is the best poi spinner you've never heard of. I'd never heard of him before heading to Firedrums back in April and seriously I was blown away by him. While most of us have dabbled in plane-bending at one point or another (beginners plane-bend unintentionally all the time), few have taken it to the jaw-dropping extremes G has. Essentially, every stall is a zero point that can be used to transition to a different plane. All of the bizarre plane-bending combos I've been working on in the past few months have been inspired by his work.

Noel managed to get video of G doing a number of his transitions in the Flowspace. Check this out for some ideas guaranteed to blow your mind!

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.

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 ;)

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.