Poi Theory of Everything - An ongoing collaboration

I'm good with that

Excellent. I totally side the idea of the unit circle being a visual aid. IMO there should be some sort of explanation of just how this concept applies to poi included in the "Theory of Everything", just for the sake of completeness. This isn't the first time somebody's compiled a document like this and every time somebody does, it's just that much better than the previous attempts

I sure liked Max's style and approach, but this document has "more" in it.

Cheers guys.

Dudes! Question on the unit circle discussion. Is this causing more confusion then it is worth? Would we be better off taking it out of the fundamental concepts and turning it into more of a side note deeper in the page? Someone has already removed it from that "condensed answer to all poi" section.
The main reason it is relevant for me is not because of it's actual shape or definition (smallest circle the poi can blah blah) but rather that grid Jon derived from it. But even that is not a rule but really more of a guideline on one way of thinking about the movements. hence it's position in Concepts, not Moves. Personally, I rarely use the actual "unit circle" in my patterns because to me full long arm looks better.

If we are going to continue terminology discussions of this sort can I request that we move them to external posts, link to them from here if relevant, and keep this thread more on the track of figuring out the overall management and structure of the Theory itself?


I agree with that. Will you write it? do you need someone to send you the log in info?


you talking about these?

Duvan's Poi Guidebook For Everyone: homeofpoi.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/621063/
and Richee's Poi(Reference guide book): homeofpoi.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/876426/

I don't always follow Richee's logic but Duvan's Poi Guidebook For Everyone has been one of my big inspirations in the work I've put into the Theory. I would like to see that work more directly added to this one.

Yes, it was causing confusion but it appears to be resolved by describing it as a visual aid. It's my assumption that AlienJon introduced the idea and (hopefully) he'll come here and clarify just what he means. I/we could be missing something.

As of right now, I'd like to see it in the isolation's subsection as the working description is rather counter-intuitive to what someone might picture when they try to apply the unit circle concept to general spinning.

I haven't seen the grid, nor read the theory.



That might be easy to miss, especially if someone is reading an "old" thread and needs a quick reference in order to continue following the discussion. It might be worth considering that were someone using this document to "translate" an old thread, they might only read the one or two sentences related to the topic at hand.



By all means.



I'm not the best person for the job, unfortunately, I better read Jon's theory first.



Yep. I really liked Duvan's effort, but this looks "more complete" Richee's, OTOH, if found difficult to use. Say I were reading a thread, and needed a definition of a move or concept, I found it distracting to say the least to click on what I figured would be a definition only to be deposited into another discussion that may, or may not contain the info I'm looking for.

Stout... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOlCZMFIBMI

Cheers MNS

I don't know about putting it under isolations. As I understand it, an isolation defines the unit circle but the concept has applications beyond just that. Can we leave it as it is under concepts for now until we get some real clarity on it?

I think the "The answer to all poi" section is causing confusion since it includes things which are repeated latter. What does everyone think of my dissolving it into the concepts.

I'll wait a few days for response.

Adapted from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars

Wikis do not have firm rules besides the general principles. Be bold in editing, moving, and modifying content. Although it should be the aim, perfection is not required. Do not worry about making mistakes. We try to keep back up copies of all prior versions of the article.
- - Be bold: If you see something that can be improved, improve it!
- - Editing policy: Improve pages wherever you can, and do not worry about leaving them imperfect.
- - Ignore all rules: If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.

I am going to log in and change that one title from "The answer to all poi:_(as condensed as possible)" to "The Theory, as condensed as we got it so far"

here are some notes on updates I've been making.

* changed timing information so that it is not repeated.
* If you take the same time butterfly and rotate it any number of degrees around the vertical axis through the horizontal plane, it will remain same time. If you turn the butterfly onto it's side, through the vertical plane around the horizontal axis, it becomes same time. In other words if you tilt your head and look at split time butterfly from sideways, it looks like same time butterfly does right side up.
*
in response to the green, by that definition wibbles are not contact poi if they leave the wrist, neither are anything based on tosses like whip catches, or snags. I am going to remove it.

I think the trick here is to try and envision just how this document will be used. I'm guessing that it will probably serve as a reference, or encyclopedic function rather than being a document or website that someone would use to learn poi as they progress through it. having said that I feel that a format where everything is linked to pretty much everything else revalent to the subject so someone can research an idea and get All the pertinent information without getting distracted searching around for "more"

Yeah! I like the way you word it.

That brings back the subject for me of using a "mind map" (I think they're called) as another way of presenting the information we input into this Theory. A map will give us an easier way to visually show how everything connects and relates, which is one of the major purposes of this project. My vision of the map is to make each bubble an interactive object which can be expanded to show deeper content and has lines and links to other related bubbles.

We titled this the Theory of Everything for a specific reason; which is mentioned in the introduction section but maybe should be given more emphasis. We use that title because like the original Unified Field Theory of Everything in physics, we are beginning the process of consolidating all poi knowledge as a part of a search for an answer to that mythical question, "what is it all about?" We want to break it down to all of it's most basic elements while simultaneously piecing together the entire whole in order to better understand it all.

*Disclaimer* I've been busy (in a good way) and out of touch with this thread. So I've only skimmed the discussion.

My curent stance on the unit circle concept in poi: early on I was trying to pidgeon-hole poi unit circle with the mathematical unit circle. In math it has a radius of 1 unit. In poi I've moved to thinking of it as having Diameter of 1. It's just easier and less confusing that way. In other word the diameter of the circle is equal to 1 poi unit.

At this point, I like to think of the length of the poi as one unit. This unit defines The proportions you will use at that given length to make the poi do stuff by waving your arms about with a certain timing, frequency, and spacial proportions.

At this point I like to think of the basis for physical movement of things in terms of oscillatory timing (or cycle timing), symmetry, and proportion.

This applies to anything including the human body, but the human body is such a complex system that it is daunting to systematize it and kinda takes the fun out of dancing. I do take a crack at it here and there non the less, then usually go off and lose myself in some good dancing. I'd like to point out that the motivation for movement (your body and/or your props) comes from your consciousness, emotions, thinking, feeling, etc.

So anyway it is more useful to apply those basics of physical movement to how your body can make poi move.

Poi and most other things are a matter of relationships.

Oscillation and cycle timing:
For some background, check this wiki article on wave-phase.
Ian and the Vulcan crew have a nice way of illustrating this with pendulums. A pendulum swing or circular rotation are some of the simplest cycles you can have. If you are relating the timing of 2 swinging pendulums they fall in to nice timings in 3 major ways:

• 0 degrees out of phase or in-phase, aka at the same time. They both swing to and reach the left at the same time.
• 180 degrees out of phase or antiphase (not a term I made up!), aka at opposite times. One is reaches the left at the same time that the other reaches the right.
• 90 degrees out of phase or what I've been calling offset, aka quarter-time or offset-time. One reaches the left, then the other, then the 1st reaches the right, then the 2nd. One always leads one always follows. There is chirality ("handedness") in that poi A could be the leader OR poi B could.

Sure you could use phase relationships other than 0, 90, or 180... however they tends to look like sloppy versions of the basic 3. (Dude I can spin in 16th time!)

You can apply this timing to any aspect of poi, not just pendulums or circles... consecutive stalls could be done together, opposite, or offset. You could apply it to more complex geometric cycles, for instance take a C CAP shape. Your poi can trace it together, opposite, or offset. You can hit cross points at the same time in a cycle, opposite time, or offset (Andy House touched on this in a cross point post a wile back). When you start dealing with shapes traced over time there can be correlations between cycle timing and spatial orientation. A simple example of this is a crossover figure-8 (the 8 bent into a V that we all spin). If you look at the timing of a 2-beat weaves cross-points, you see that they hit the same point in space in an offset timing. If on the other hand you spin split-time wall-plane and cross over behind you, you've crossed at the same time, but your cross-points hit 2 point in space one on your left and one on your right.

Symmetry and proportion:
Cyrille's document on geometric poi poi does a nice job of defining this.

Proportion:
I'm getting tired and will have to come back and edit this in another time. Please someone remind me to do it and keep buggin me!

Cheers, so the unit, in unit circle, relates to one poi length, check. So how dos the unit circle concept apply to poi, given that the center of rotation ( IE your hand ) is constantly moving and that center of rotation moves in three dimensions to boot ?

hey. remember those discussions back when where people were searching for a mathematical formula for the three beat weave and we got a bunch of sine, cosine stuff and the Z axis was completely ignored ?

IMO, the unit circle is a very difficult concept to apply to a dynamic system and may cause more confusion than it's worth.

Wave phase..OK, gotcha. The wiki article is rather redundant when held up to the explanation as to how it applies to spinning that you posted below it.

Chirality...How does this term fit in ? I can sorts see it however I could swing an offset timed pendulum pattern and still have it come out as a symmetrical pattern. Is this a case of trying to make a term fit into a concept, maybe by taking the term "handedness" and working backwards ?

What does Continuous Assembly Pattern mean? Yes, I googled it and it looks like something that was "locally" coined and needs a definition just how it relates to what we're doing here. Might it better to just stick with the widely accepted and recognisable term..move ?

I'm not trying to be a dick here, but I can't be the only one whose having difficulty following these tech discussions and I'd appreciate some clarification as to their meaning.

I actually dont know what I'm talking about on either point, but I'm going to have a punt and we'll see how far off the mark I was later on.



In an isolation the centre of rotation is the middle of the poi (I think)

In a point isolation it momentarily is the head of the poi.

Its late... usually I'd flat out know the answer but I can't be certain while this tired.



I *think* its something along the lines of a hybrid. Though maybe the difference is that you switch between what could technically be termed two different hybrids because you're switching arm direction...

I've seen what have been called CAP patterns before, don't know the definition but from what I can gather thats as good a guess as I've got for now.

I apologise for my 100% useless post.

The above may prove an in-depth answer and I've got to get back to logistics for playpoi UK tour. Bug me about it and I'll get to it sooner or later.



LOL, yeah I found those again not to long ago. I hadn't seen that yet way back in the glowticking days when I first simulated simple move with additive waveform controllers on X Y and Z in 3D Studio MAX. I WAS using Z >_^. Actually, when I dug deep enough I found that NYC (I think) was talking about sinusoidal functions in X Y and Z.

For those a bit confused by this exchange, have your friend spin a simple poi circle in wall plane (preferably with glow poi). Now walk around to the side until you are perpendiculare to the spin plane. You'll notice that the poi head looks like it is bobing up and down tracing a line. You are watching a sine-wave. A circle can be graphed with a wave function in each of its 2 dimensions. The waves happen to be 90 degrees out of phase. Cosine happens to be the same wave as sine, but 90 degrees out of phase. So they can naturally be used in x and y to graph a circle. If you add another wave moving the poi along its axis of spin, you get crossovers and helices.





Maybe so. Ultimately what I was working towards with "the poi unit circle" was my current understanding of symmetry and proportion as applied to poi. I'll try to get to this when I reply to the 1st point.




The wiki article is only redundant for those that already understand wave phase and don't need a refresher or fresh inspiration on the subject.

I tend to link to a source outside of the poi body of knowledge when I bring it to a poi discussion, so that people can educate themselves on what I'm talking about and see that I'm drawing on knowledge from beyond the specialized body of poi knowledge that has been growing online over the years.

This is to combat the tendency to turn everything into a specialized poi knowledge specific thing, which cuts our body of knowledge of from the rest of the world if it runs rampant. I'm just looking for a balance between well-formed specialization in poi and actually cloistering new poi peeps from the rest of the world that has inspired us to get to where we are with poi knowledge.

Isn't it better to turn people on to knowledge that has driven the very existence that we live in today at every level, and say "hey poi is just another example of this sort of thing. If you understand waves better you can draw on all sorts of outside knowledge to better understand poi and think outside the poibox". (You love it Andreas)




It is perhaps easier to think of Chirality a simply meaning "handedness". However, "handedness" may mislead some people to think I'm only talking about something in the domain of "your hands".

"Chirality" on the other hand (pun intended), is a powerful abstract concept dealing with asymmetry. I'm simply using the meaning from beyond the world of poi. I'm pointing out that we can say the offset pendulum example, or a 4-beat weave, or the offset C CAP example all have the attribute "Chirality".

I included the link to wiki for those not yet familiar with the term. I'm not petitioning that we start using "Chirality" as a special poi term that has a different poi-specific and limiting definition than the word already has. This is the case with terms such as "isolation", or "unit circle" (oops). FYI when I say "unit circle" with regards to poi, I mean it as short hand for "the poi unit circle", which is a poi-specific term.





At Burning Man 2007 The peeps at OMCC (Noel, Greg, Jordan, Zan, myself, etc) really started to germinate some synergistic ideas that lead to our current understandings of poi. Damien (French_Saltimbanque) Showed up and really added to that with his explorations of CAPs. Later, on HoP he contributed to the Yuta moves analysis post. That is where he coined the term CAPs. I liked it and started using it. To me, it means taking basic "poi geometry" building blocks or fractional piece of other moves with simpler symmetry and assembling them together into more complexly layered moves. Typically this means that each part of the sequence has you change between different driving styles or building blocks.

This is a bit different from what I think a hybrid is, but there are some cases of overlap.

If anything it is a larger overarching concept and family of moves that could be labeled with a CAP attribute. I am not intending to mean "a move". It is silly to say spinning a circle over and over is a CAP, "because you are assembling a sequence of the same building bock repeated over and over again". This is silly in the same way as insisting people refer to a circle as "an ellipse who's focii are an infinitesimal distance apart".

Durbs once petitioned people to only refer to a move as a hybrid if it constantly changed which poi was doing what driving style. To me that is a form of CAP. Where as repeating an iso vs extension hybrid hand-to-poi head is a simple repeating move that hybridizes a different driving style for each hand. If you do a hybrid weave where the hands change driving styles that is a subtle form of CAP to me, but it is more highlighting of its "hybrid-ness". If you do a hybrid weave where you don't change driving styles it is not a CAP in my book.

Ok gotta go work.

Cheers Jon

I'll wait for your expansion on the poi unit circle before commenting but I'm all up for calling it the poi unit circle so its differentiated from the unit circle we all know and love from high school.

I understand your description of wave phase and it's relationship to poi, but I have to ask, are there any practical applications for bringing this into a poi discussion or is it strictly academic ?

As for chirality, I'm happy with using the word asymmetry instead, as *we* are all familiar with the term and what it means and having to research a term and ponder how it applies to poi ( while wondering why yo didn't just say asymmetry) is rather labourious and somewhat distracting.

Cheers on the CAP definition. I have no problems with this as long as a document like the one being created here has a clear and understandable definition of what the term means. I haven't looked upthread for a few days, but a description of the different driving styles would be nice in case a reader questions that term.

What I'm trying to avoid here is something I've termed "Richee Thread Syndrome" where ideas are presented and those ideas are obscured by the language used, leading to people making posts like MNS did above, full of "I think.....s" and "might mean....s" and people running with those "I think it means...this". and further obscuring the idea being presented.

If The Theory of Everything might just end up being THE defining document when it comes to poi terminology and concepts, and IMO, including as much clear, understandable information as possible will aid in it becoming just that.

I totally agree with trying to make information clear, especially in this thread. Of course that is why we discuss things before we form entries into the wiki/body of the original post.

Simple or easy ideas are simple and easy to convey. More complex ideas can be challenging to convey in a simple way, because they are more challenging concepts that take more to appreciate and experience what the ramifications are.

I often deal in foundational or building-block ideas and then build from there. A foundation is a simple thing in and of itself. It's relatively easy to lay a foundation. However if attention isn't payed to certain details and the form not measured to adhere to certain characteristics, then the house build on that foundation will be unstable and it will not withstand the test of time.

So, sometimes (well ok, a lot of the time) I bring words and concepts that need defining. That is why I try to provide a definition in my post and/or link to one, ala my link to Wikipedia. I hope that what I populate my posts with is easier for the average HoPer to decipher and find usefulness in than some of Richee's posts. (I like your post BTW Richee, even when they confuse me Just keep your pictures and diagrams hosted somewhere that i up 24/7 and the posts make more sense)



Simple answer: Heck yes! It has lead me to discovering things about poi, other props, my body and flow arts in general that tend to blow peoples minds.

Long-winded answer: Nick Woolsey got a slack line and has been progressing nicely. I've started to try it out too. Yesterday It was my 1st time really being able to maintain balance for a wile. Today I got up this morning and after some realizations was able to walk the line for the 1st time. What I realized was how my body was reacting to the line's oscillations, and because of my not only academic but experiential understanding of phase cancellation, I had a much easier time canceling out the wobbling line and keep my balance, wile shifting my weight and presto I started to walk the slack line.

I have learned to feel waves wile splashing in them, throwing and being thrown with minimal exertion in Aikido, when I am making them run through my body popping and waving and dancing liquid to musical arangements of them, making them with a guitar, in 3d spacial manipulation when I 1st picked up flower sticks 15 years ago, and of course when I started spinning poi. My understanding of waves and phase relationships is far more experiential than academic.

I'm looking for ways to illuminate what I experience, what I use to do the things that people want to learn from me. Some of this involves referencing the academic body of knowledge on waves and phase.

This is the quintessential dilemma: A lifelong musician discovers music theory through experience. When learning the academic body of music theory knowledge he empowers himself to discuss deep and subtle concepts with other musicians that understand it in a clear and precise way. This leads to new insight and growth and the experience of making new beautiful music. Of course the musician wants to use music theory to teach people what took him so long to discover. With the proper use of music theory, relationships can be illuminated that allow the student's experience to accelerate in the direction they want to go, quicker. With unbalanced focus on the academia of music theory you get an egghead musician who can appreciate Bach on an intellectual level and maybe even play his pieces with some skill, but who can't improvise and understand how the theory can amplify his own musical creativity. If this person is happy with this roll, great!

I do see the danger in unbalanced focus on egghead academia. What I'm aiming at is to illuminate relationships in poi that will help people grow in a broad and deep way. I'm trying to help people avoid barking up the wrong tree so they can get to the fruits of their labor sooner. This is a tricky one, and I appreciate people checking in on whether I'm doing a good job of it.

The point of the wave phase thing:
Practical applications. Have you ever dealt with beginners that have a hard time differentiating between same-time and split-time? Or at least making their poi spin one way or the other? Or maybe they can do some moves that are split-time and others in same-time, but have a hard time maintaining either timing for any move. I know I did when I 1st started. Once I started to play with the underlying rhythm and realize that it permeated all of what I did, I had a major level up in timing control and freedom to make the poi do what I wanted, when I wanted.
So my approach is to give a simple exercise you can use to isolate the feeling you are trying to internalize (ie swinging pendulums). Then get people to understand that these feelings can be used in ALL poi! Not only do you gain more control of what you want to do, by not taking things for granted the knowledge can lead to deeper movements that people don't always com to naturally. For instance, when you do a 2-beat weave, you take it as natural that your cross points land out in front of you and do so one after the other (offset, 90 out of phase). But what is going on is phase alignment in 3d (you want a 3d system right?). So keep your in-plane phase alignment the same as your average 2-beat weave (split-time chase), but cross your poi over at the same time. You end up placing one cross point pointing up and one pointing down. It feels weird at first.

Maybe you want to get better at wrap combos. At first I had a really hard time getting wraps to combo in the way that I wanted. Wraps are basically like playing percussion on your body. If you already understand the rhythms that are associated with the phase exercises, you can look for them in your wraps and get good at together, opposite, and offset (make sure to learn both chiralities). You may also realize that depending on the spacial relations of the body parts you are wrapping off of, your split-time spinning will turn into wraps in opposite phase, and in other cases it will turn into offset phase.



Many people's understanding of "symmetry" is actually a specific type of symmetry: mirror symmetry. In Cyrille's geomertic document he deals with others as well, as do I and many others. This wider understanding of symmetry is starting to inform the development of poi.

Many people's understanding of "asymmetry" is actually a specific type of asymmetry: chirality. There are other types of asymmetry than dissimilartiy from a mirror image. So I chose a more accurate word that asymmetry, because at some point making a distinction may be important.

Admittedly, I can't think of a good poi specific example right off the top of my head. Usually when this happens though, I eventually find a poi specific example and it leads me to new poi moves!

Cheers jon, thanks for the excellent reply.

I see now where you're coming from with introducing these concepts and there's quite a few things in there that I've never run across before.

As a for instance....when i was working on my split time, which was an issue when I was first starting out, I thought more in terms of a metronome in an effort to "balance out" the perceived extra effort my dominant hand *must* have been putting into my spinning. I hadn't thought to visualise a wave function, which on reflection, is much more flow oriented than a back-and-forth motion.