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...
Showing posts with label unit circle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unit circle. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
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, June 11, 2009
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?
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?
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