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...

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 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.

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...

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.

The pain and joys of airwraps

I have a confession to make: I never learned airwraps when I began my journey into poi. It started out as just kind of an embarrassing secret I hoped nobody would ever notice and then I started running into guys who could do things with hyperloops that made me break into a cold sweat and run and hide inside large wooden objects.

Like isolations, they just seemed kind of silly and pointless to me. This year, as part of my New Year's resolutions I opted to go back through and learn these basic skills that I'd avoided before. Needless to say, it's been a trying year so far.

While there are plenty of tutorials out there on how to do airwraps, I've unfortunately never found one that explained how to avoid many of the basic issues I kept having with them. Why did half of them become Gordian knots while the other have broke through clean? Why did I keep hitting my hands in the process of doing the wraps and how could I avoid doing it in the future? Most importantly: which of these lessons transferred to hyperloops and what skills would I have to learn from scratch for those?

While I'm nowhere near proficient in them yet, here are a few things I've managed to pick up so far that aren't in any of the videos. Here's hoping some other folks dealing with the frustration of these things finds something useful here:

1. Essentially an airwrap is the same thing as a weave, but done with the poi crossing over each other rather than your hands. This has a lot of implications that are not immediately clear. For one, it means that the simple, "just let them wrap and they'll automatically unwrap" is not necessarily the case. To wrap and then unwrap, the poi have to cross over on one side (outside the hands), continue to cross between the hands, and then uncross on the other side of the body (once again, outside the hands). You can think of this as being something like a double-decker sandwich--the planes where the poi can wrap and unwrap are like the slices of bread and whatever you put between them becomes the placement of your hands. You can ONLY unwrap when the poi plane, like the slice of bread, is completely outside of your hands on the other side. If this doesn't happen, you wind up with an ugly, ugly knot.
2. Timing is everything--this may sound obvious, but to me it wasn't at all. I still frequently hit my poi heads on my hands when I attempt to unwrap due to being unused to the timing of doing airwraps. The reason for this is that they don't actually move as fast as they would if you were doing a weave in the same amount of time--they move twice as fast because as the poi wrap around the middle of their leashes, they traverse half the space in the same amount of time. This means that you either need to give it half as much or one and a half times as much time as usual to cross it over to the other side of your body. Otherwise, the poi will be coming up into your hand when you anticipate it being away from your body. To get around this, I've actually been moving my hands around to follow slightly the path of the poi and make up the difference in these two timings. Sometimes it's working and sometimes it isn't.
3. When it comes to hyperloops, life gets a whole lot more complicated. The timing is even trickier being as how the poi are moving even faster yet, though the sandwich metaphor is easier to achieve here. The problem is that it's also really easy to shoot past the exit plane. For example, a significant number of the hyperloops I'm attempting wind up switching planes over completely, so I wind up with the loop going inside my arms on the exit side of my body and then, yep, you guessed it, tangles. My solution to this so far has been to pull my leading arm behind the nexus of the hyperloop to force it into the proper plane, but if my timing is at all off it tends to shoot straight over to being a reverse hyperloop rather than unwrapping.
4. It's really helpful to be able to do airwraps in both directions. This is analogous to taking the two-beat weave and learning to turn it into the three-beat weave. It not only puts your hands in the proper plane to exit, it also opens up a very basic bit of symmetry that a body should always strive for.

I'll keep on posting as I find more of these tricks. In the meantime, are there any more experienced folks out there who can point me to some additional items I should be on the lookout for?

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.

Video: Spiral Wrap Variations

I don't really know what to classify this video as I'd neither consider it a tutorial nor a tech blog, but it does contain a few interesting ideas on what you can do with spiral wraps. Enjoy!

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.

Do you know the math of CAPs?

A thread on Home of Poi asking for a definition of CAPs has turned up not just an interesting history of the concept, but the most comprehensive mathematical description I've yet seen of the move. I don't pretend to understand much (or, really most) of the mathematics in this post, but I'm considering it a moral imperative to educate myself and figure out the mathematics of poi (mainly because I suspect it has major implications for concepts like Alien Code and antispin flowers).

Here is Zaltymbunk's description:

Hi everybody !! It have been a long time i did not take a look in HOP ... and then i have not exactly caught all the purposes of the previous posts ... so i am just gonna answer the question of the topic ... sorry by advance for the possible repetitions i could make. So what's that i have called CAPs (Continuous Assembly Patterns) ?!? Firstly ... let me explain my vision of what a pattern is. To my mind a pattern is a cyclic curve that can be define in a unique way by its harmonic component (frequencies or number of tours) and by its "modulus" component (radius or lengthes). In the field of the 2 circles compounds ... which is for instance the most commonly used (i'll explain later the general case of the 3 compounds circles) ... here are some examples according to this model : O is the shoulder, M is the hand ("Main" in french), E is the Extremity of the object (poď, club staff) and Ebis is the other extremity in the case of the staff. Theta1 and Theta2 (frequencies or number of turns) define the harmonic part of a pattern whereas Rho1 and Rho2 (radius or length) define the "modulus" part. Rho=1 when the arm is stretched (when the poď is unwrapped). The patterns will be defined in the following way : Theta1 Theta2 ; Rho1 Rho2. And now examples : The first example is 1 4 ; 1 1 (if E would have run the other way : -1 -4 ; 1 1) The second example is 1 -6 ; 1 1 (if E would have run the other way : -1 6 ; 1 1) As we can see these patterns are in a particular case of "modulus" component ... as the 2 radius or lengthes are equal (in this case ... the simplest ... the values are 1) ... and called "rosettes". There is another particular "modulus" part mode which give curves called cycloďds. This case happen when the speeds of M and E are equal in the earth (or audience) reference. It means in terms of maths that Rho2/Rho1=abs(Theta1/(Theta1+Theta2)) (Rho1.abs(Theta1)=Rho2.abs(Theta1+Theta2)). With the first example (1 4 ; 1 1) above it would give us : And it would be called 1 4 ; 1 1/5. With the example of a 3 foils "rosette" antispin (1 -3 ; 1 1) : It would be called 1 -3 ; 1 1/2. All the cycloids are not feasable ... i mean if we keep the arm stretched (Rho1=1) ... because the differents cases of wraps (thumb excluded) can only take the following values : Rho2 -> Wrap 1/5 -> 2h+1f 1/4 -> 2h 1/3 -> 1h+3f 2/5 -> 1h+2f 1/2 -> 1h+1f 3/5 -> 4f=1h 2/3 -> 3f 3/4 -> 2f 4/5 -> 1f 1 -> 0f (h for hand and f for finger) There is also patterns with more than one arm turn (Theta1>1) ... the most popular example of these kind of pattern would be : AKA 2 -5 ; 1 1 and 2 -5 ; 1 2/3 (if we keep the same sense of running as the examples above) But there is a lot of other examples like: AKA 3 2 ; 1 1 and 3 2 ; 1 3/5 (rotated by 90° in this image) AKA 3 4 ; 1 1 and 3 4 ; 1 3/7 (typical case of unfeasable cycloid ; rotated by 45° in this image) In general ... with poïs ... all inspins patterns are feasable whereas antispin patterns have a rule of feasability : abs(Theta1)). Ok we have now our elementary patterns ... defined by Theta1 Theta2 ; Rho1 Rho2. If we want to take only a part of the full cycle of these patterns ... we should add another number in the definition : d (for division). 0>d>=1 and d=1 means that we take the full cycle of the pattern. So far we have Theta1 Theta2 ; Rho1 Rho2 ; d for the definition. As the brain have two independent hemispheres ... there 2 processes of motion creation in spinning fields. One of these is the process of patterns superposition with the two hands/poïs ... which refers to the parallel/simultaneous information treatment of the left part of the brain. The results of this process is what is commonly call : Hybrids. The other one is the process of elementary patterns assembly (obviously drawn with one poï) ..; which refers to the serial/sequencial information treatment of the rightpart of the brain. he results of this process is what is commonly call : CAPs. A CAP ... or complex pattern ... must as well be cyclic ... and can be the assembly of 2 (or more) elementary patterns iterated one (or more) time. Here are some examples of CAP of 2 elementary patterns iterated one time : The famous 1 0 ; 1 3/4 ; 1/2 & -1 4 ; 1 3/4 ; 1/2 from the yuta move analysis post. AKA 1 0 ; 1 3/4 ; 3/4 & -1 4 ; 1 3/4 ; 3/4 (with another starting position) AKA 1 3 ; 1 3/4 ; 2/3 & -1 3 ; 1 3/4 ; 2/3 (with another starting position) I let you think about CAPs with more than 2 elementary patterns and more than one iteration (i'll try to add some of these with my explanation later). Also think that ... as these CAP are patterns ... it is also allowed to put them in the hybridisation/parallel/simultaneous process to see what happen. As i said ... later some extra explanations ... and some complements ... about the notation and the model. If some notions need to be clarified ... do not hesitate to reply !! Topette ("See you" as we say in my area in France) !!

To read the original thread, click here.

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!

Experiments in body mechanics

I spent a good long time in my poi practice session today playing with the way my body shifts its weight as I spin. Teaching in a dance studio, I'll freely confess I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder due to the fact that poi sits so uncomfortably in the middle of dance, juggling, martial arts, and street performance that alas it seems to be none of these as well. Part of the reason for this is that the movements of poi (especially tech poi) are so incredibly focused on the upper body that it's ridiculously easy to perform an entire routine's worth of material without ever moving your feet.

Given the wonderful expressiveness of the human body, it begs the question of if poi is an instrument to frame the body's movements or the body is merely the frame around the poi's movements. While it's easy to chime in wanting to avoid easy categorization and claim the answer is both, I'd submit for the record that in my day I can count the number of poi spinners who've used their poi in the former way rather than the latter.

It's not hard to see why this route is preferred. After all, most of us who come to poi spend our countless hours dissecting antispin movements, compound circles, and the all-important cateye and zero-point stalls that will make us look like tech badasses. Few of these maneuvers require us to do much more than pivot 180 degrees to turn with a figure, however. It's the very rare poi spinner who invests much time in how to move their bodies in a similarly striking fashion and thus, those who do frequently are derided by tech spinners for relying on moves shunned as being to simple.

Lately I've been trying to do both--today's experiment was in center of gravity. I usually warm up by guiding my arms through all four combinations of poi timing and direction and then by doing a number of turns with these combinations. It's very easy to do these with weight squared to the ground, only shifting when turns are necessary. But what about if we imagined our hands guiding not just our poi, but also our body weight, such that moving our hands around in same-time, same-direction results in having our hands/poi hover over each foot and then our mid-line sequentially. The effect is actually quite striking. Similarly, we shift between feet with split-time opposites and we have an excellent opportunity to bounce our weight up and down with opposites same-time. Because split-time same direction requires a balance both vertically and horizontally at all times, it essentially anchors the body in a single position.

Even more interesting is what starts happening when you deliberately work against the center of balance. This requires a mild contortion of the body that possesses many of the asymmetrical properties I've mentioned before that theoretically performance is supposed to embrace. How do other folks out there work dance into their spinning?

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.