Do You Think We'll Ever Run Out of New Moves?

It'd be a sad day, but do you think we'll ever exhaust poi? Or is it something that there will continue to be innovation in forever? I speak only in terms of moves, not in terms of stylistic elements.

Well, we've certainly reached far and the amount of shapes and patterns that can be done with poi, while vast, is not infinite. At the rate tech is growing I'll make a wild guess that we'll reach 'peak poi' in around a year.

If you wish to reach the 'end' you´l reach it, if not, you wont...

It might slow down, but someone will come up with something new at some point, although I am not sure whether anything in the last year or so has been brand new, rather it seems to have been a development of previous trends.

I think that wer are mostly away from a real "ending" - yeah maybe most patterns are reached - but did you try playing them isolated - whole antispin/inspin? Maybe there is a possibility of doing more complexed move like hybrids which are including 3 or more driving-styles.

And of course - do you try to play (isolated) antispins with the center not rotating in a circle? I saw "gè" doing some great staff-flowers which I think Cyrielle has covered in a .pdf-file. This patterns are really amazing and I hope just a beginning.

And if we really run out of tech patterns - we should start thinking about how to get them that we still have our flow and it looks great for an audience for example.

And of course in Evolution there is never an ending theres are only pauses!

I personally thikn that it will come to an end at some point. Definately not for an individual person, that's just too much for one person.

Someone will probably come up with something new soon.

Also, I could think that there may be more play with point isolations coming in after a while.

Well, im working on the next breakthrough currently. I will reveal it when its done. It will rock your world.

Turns out Nick has a tutorial for it

jk, I don't even know what it is yet, but that would be pretty funny in my book

damn it. thats the last time I give help to someone who is struggling. He was all like help! WoodlandApple, I need help! and I, like a sucker, showed him some moves.

But can he do it btb

Lol, not only btb, but utl, bth, and atomic in both those places. If what your're doing doesn't work like that, than he made it work just to piss you off

I curse you Nick!

now Im damned to play second fiddle. I will end up dying bitter and alone; doomed to always walk in the shadow of the one that refined my lifes work.

Too bad for you, as he has mastered your cursing abilities as well

I don't think it's actually an answerable question in its present form. In mathematical and some philosophical theories it's important to know how to individuate the objects in the domain of discourse--that is, you need to know when you're talking about one thing or two (more technically, most individuating expressions in formal theories are similar to the extensionality axiom from ZF, with the form "if Ax iff Ay, then x=y"). If moves are not distinct physical events distinguished by the region of spacetime they occupy, but are abstract objects like movement forms (which I'm pretty sure they are [if they exist at all] if you and I can actually perform the same move), then I'm not sure what individuates them (except insofar as I suspect they're a type of mathematical object [if they exist at all] and I know what individuates mathematical objects in general).

The point of this comment, besides it being a verbose form of shrugging in response to the question, is that maybe someone out there should actually find individuating criteria for moves. Me, I'm too lazy and too rusty with the applied mathematics to do it myself. There are a number of interesting properties we can name about various moves (driving style, direction/timing, even connections to other moves), but it would be interesting to know if there were some more interesting fundamental properties that these were special cases of.

Alternatively, it may be that there are no criteria for individuating them, from which I would conclude that there are no such things as poi moves at all. Actually, I find this idea amusing, so I'm going to accept this as my default until I find a good criterion; my official stance is there are no poi moves anyway, let alone a worry of running out

That's it for my super abstract tech musing (babble) for now.

Look into what drex was trying to work out a couple of months ago, classifying (specifically) hybrids according to timing and directional symmetries. I have not had the bandwidth to see how far he has gotten, but it looked promising.

Hmm... I'll drop him a line some time. It would also be interesting if hybrids existed, but other things didn't

I'm probably the only spinner pedantic enough to be seriously concerned about the ontology of poi... Yeesh. I suppose it's better than worrying about its ethics.

Here lies your answer.

Pity; I don't have a clue what it means!

Probably not the only one dealing with poi ontology. You might just look at it from a different viewpoint.

re: no moves really exist:
This might be possible, but is unhelpful. Most frameworks seem to be consistent nowadays which means that communicating those moves (real or imaginary) to others has a chance of success. If we throw that out, there will be anarchy.

Well, in the absence of "moves" there are things that I'm pretty sure do exist, like driving styles, timing and direction of poi and arms, ordered pairs of these, etc., which certainly are useful. And to say that something like a meltdow doesn't exist is not to slight the fiction, it's simply to clarify some theoretical groundwork.

My curiosity on this particular topic is a pretty purely philosophical one about ontology and, more broadly, the aesthetics of poi. Basically, this is the overlap of poi with my other hobby, analytic philosophy.

I suppose it is true that you do have that framework. So then a move is just a shorter way of referring to something built in that framework?

If I'm staying to my "no moves" line, I would say that talk of moves is an articulate form of grunting and pointing to a nebulous event that instantiates all, but not only, some subset of the individuatable components. I think, theoretically, "meltdown-ish" or "weave-ish" would end up having to count as primitive predicates that couldn't be stated in terms of whatever other predicates it turns out we can individuate the extensions of. So not an abbreviation, more of a rhetorical gesture, if that makes sense.

I mean, there'd be a lot more moves I'd be confident we could individuate if we could talk about bodily movements and positions, but I don't think anyone would like the results if we had to do that by appeal to metric properties; the cardinality of our set of moves would be crazy, and would fail to individuate just the things we're trying to explain. There's more hope for a non-mathematical or quasi-mathematical framework in this respect, but I'm not sure what the non-mathematical stuff would be.

Not that I'm married to the Moveless Thesis at all; I just find it entertaining.

My english is very poor, but this topic is so interesting that i'm attempting...
I agree with sister eleven,and also i think that this the golden age of poi, or probably the beginning of that. This is a time of creation, when creation will stop, will start the time of tradition and conservation, and finally the end of spinning, i hope in a far far future. Now poi are simply a new toy, and we can discovery it, at the moment there are no limits, just practice=natural selection can give to spinning its ultimate form. And a lot of moves are coming, i'm sure, when guy that are starting now will have been seven or ten years spinning spinning wil explode completly! (i'm sure i mistaked a lot of verbs here ehehe)

Finally one more thing, mathematial spinning can be seen also like a fractal, each concept is deeply linked with all the other, and can be studied and emproved almost anlimitedly. At the same time, during our practice, we can amprove all the complessive structure of the fractal, enlarging our point of view. In this ipotetical system is allowed also a matematical description of single trick, without losting the total view, but is so much hard to explaine something like this that would be a wast of time.. lol

I hope that my english was good enough for this deep and probably boring post :-P

We will think we've learned all the poi moves one could imagine
Then shall come the A-poi-calypse to wash away the sins of all the spinners.
All we have gained will be lost and the few survivors will covet any scraps of knowledge we once possessed.
In time humanity will learn to rebuild. We will rediscover socks and ball chains with swivels, LED lights in plastic balls and the sacred, holy Kev-Lar that brings the gift of the Gods to the new humanity.

But then your basis must be something. Position? Centre of Spin? Direction?

Right, those sorts of things are fine; my point was that I don't think you can derive just the things we would be tempted to distinguish as "moves" on that basis. If "moves" did exist, no reductive analysis of them is available in terms of the most general things that do exist (angular momentum, driving style, symmetry, or what have you). They would be non-eliminable. This is in contrast with something like topology where you could ultimately say everything you could say in topological terms, in terms of set theory (with some sacrifice of brevity). Basically I wanted to be careful with the idea of abbreviation, since in the sense that topological notations are abbreviations of set theoretic notations, moves are not abbreviations of anything (if the No Moves Thesis is true).

I am too lazy to read the whole page and a half of oppinions.

I don't think poi will, it's evolving and changing, years ago people (AFAIK) were not doing contact poi, or metior/poi combo, or throws and whips etc etc, so as new doors open, new patterns and paths become possible. Then mix concepts with individual "move groups", more concepts become available. I have seen someone combine club spinning "moves" with poi, stuff I havn't seen anyone else do (not saying people havnt done it, but this particular stuff, was the first I have seen).

I will never know every pattern and be able to do every "move" or every combination, so wether there is eventually a limit or not, i really don't care, I doubt any 1 person will ever hit that absolute defining point where there is nothing left to learn.

People whoes spinning I admire (not going to float egos) generally tend to have their "path" they have taken, one may focus on tech, another on contact, another on flow, and they may be incredible at their chosen paths, but I would imagine, say to a flow spinner "do that contact poi", then they would be lost, and vise versa.

There will only be a limit when people stop being creative.... my 2p

But why not? How do you define a "move" then? I follow what you are saying, but I think that I would have to say you are wrong, probably because I am missing that.

Well that's really the question, innit? I don't define "move" because I don't think I can define it in any vocabulary I've seen. The point of my adopting the slightly absurd position I have is to shift the burden of proof onto those who think that they can individuate something like a 4x4 fountain from absolutely everything else in such a way as to defuse counterexamples. So tell me, how should I define "move"?

Hmmm.... Point taken. Will have to sit and think on that one.

Nulleamai understood my post.

Fractals innit.

let me know as soon as you do

As far as it ending i think its far from happening. Moves get modified and tweaked all the time which spawn ideas for new moves entirely. I mean at some point its gotta end but its to much for one person to do alone so essentially no it will never end

well unless you happen to learn the secret to immortality but that isnt happenin soon

Care to put money on that?

I am pretty close to cracking it

In theory you could do it, or at least enhance lifespans, by reducing telomerase degradation.

People need some kind of destination point... "at some point it will end." But it wont. Poi is art. Art is infinite. Circular patterns around a point will not end because of Pi. Thank you.

lmao:)

I got bored of poi a few years ago because i thought i had reached 'the end'. How wrong i was! there has been a bunch of new stuff since then (i stopped practicing around when hybrids first started being really explored) and recently i have come back to it.

My point is, you may think you have reached the end of what is possible, then someone comes along and blows everyone away and it starts all over again. There are discussions here on HoP about 'has poi stagnated?' with people asking when will there be something new. There is always something you havent thought about.

Contact staff however has pretty much reached its limit for a while (well for upper body stuff anyway). I havnt seen a truly new move in contact in a few years. The problem with contact is there are only so many parts of the body you can roll over and in only so many ways. Poi has the advantage that they spin through space in varying circles and therefore isn't as restricted by the human body.

Im not sure if there is an actual infinite number (in the true sense of the word) of possible moves but i think we have a long way to go yet

no, 'cause there are no "moves" there are only movements. How can you run out of something that was mostly comprised of an intangible thing like imagination in the first place? Given, there are the elements such as this way or that way in relation to this timing and what ever combination of planes they exist in for the moment... but as soon as you start building them up the possibilities become huge and the line between "basic move" and "variation" blurs rather quickly. Remember, we are all comprised of energy vibrations which on our level is perceived (but only perceived) as solid state. What happens to an electron if you shine a light on it to see where it is?

"Question every thing you think you understand...
A trick is just a move that you have polished a particular presentation of.
A move is just a pattern that you choose to commit to muscle memory as a base.
A pattern is a particular sequence of attributes over time, through space.
"Move Families" are Ven diagram collections of patterns that have certain attributes in common.
Attributes only exist in an individual's mind.
Minds seem to transmit information between each other (always with some noise in the signal, as stated by communication theory).

'Only from stillness does one have infinite possibilities' (0-point, no momentum from your local frame of reference).

Once you start to move you collapse infinite possibilities into finite ones that follow certain forms. By investing energy/momentum in a particular way, you impose limits on what you are doing. Limitations etch form out of no-form. Negative space defines form in space (so say the artists)." - Alien Jon

it goes on: http://www.homeofpoi.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/899717/AlienJon.html#Post899717

listen to this, especially towards the end:

"As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it." - Albert Einstein

Unless we're on a sphere.

different terminology, same idea. with a sphere, the surrounding unknown expands even more rapidly. d:

Not if we're limited to expanding a circle on the surface of a sphere, was more my point. The circumference of darkness would increase for a while, hit a maximum point, and then shrink again

in that case you are very correct. however we live in three dimensional infinite space, not two dimensional space bounded on a sphere. so again, .

Last I heard the jury was still out on the structure of space-time, so... let's see, is there an emoticon more immature than the tongue one... Yes. Yes there is.

you win this round. that emoticon is amazing.

Haha, you have come across someone who aspires to be a theoretical physicist. Yes, a fire-spinning physicist. We do not, as of current accepted theory, live in an infinite 3-dimensional universe. Our universe is, I was never sure about the number, 3 or 4 dimensions. I think it's 3 actually, I think they just kinda stuck time in those 3. And our universe is part of an 11 dimensional multiverse composed of theoretical "membranes" that can be many different multidimensional shapes, that float around in the infinite multiverse. And these membranes do have a surface covered in waves, and it is proposed that the Big bang came about from a collision of two membranes, and the non-uniformity came about because of the many randomly-spaced collisions of the wavy surface.

Physics is a weird world my friend. Filled with things that completely defy common sense. Such as the observed fact the electrons can and very often are in more than one place at one time. That one always screws with people's heads.

And that's what you get for talking physics around me

don't let it inflate your head.
If we want to continue this discussion we should start a new thread 'cause we are starting to go off on a tangent. If you start it I will come join you.

haha, but I would end up wasting all my free time. If someone starts it though, I won't be able to help myself.

I know a lot about this topic.

The poi are not limited, we are

whats a move anyway?

I'ts one word in body language.

i hold the belief that poi is most definitely not something that is going to come to a end anytime soon. it is something that can be percieved as limited as we it to make it .
there are so many things that DyamiTK said are right on. the only thing is i think there is need for a little bit of a different approach to what a move or pattern is. first off i think the idea of patterns is a completely artificial concept( one could argue all of these are and they'd be right but this i kinda believe is more so if that makes any sense). lets take for example the pattern of a weave. if you look at the pattern involved in a weave it seems very much to be a finite pattern. but i feel it is safe to say that no one can do a perfect weave. thats because the way are bodys work we are constantly self correcting and correcting from those corrections and so on. so dispit us going by a set pattern for a weave there will always be those slight corrections that make it different. this becomes even more prominent when your talking about transitions and more advanced spinning because instead of just going by a set pattern you have to react to the poi themselves(this becomes particularly important when your working with plane bending and such).
so i believe that this is true in all of spinning and i belief what alien jon said does a good job at supporting this. when there is no energy in the system your body does not have to accommodate at all for the poi so there are infinite possibility( i guess the real only limitation is that added by gravity saying the head cant come upwards towards the hand until the proper energy had been added(dropping the hand is different)) . but as you are spinning you may have to accommodate to the energy in the poi at the which does add immediate limitation but by keeping the head in a low energy state you can accommodate the energy from the poi and from there bring it to where ever we want it. however that accommodation still does act as a limiting factor but it reduces the limitation on the logic that the less energy/momentum you add in the less limitations you have and when you use things such as isolations the limitations on the poi head is reduced while the energy/momentum is switched to the hand( which is not as bounded by the more energy more limitation rule.) so by using point isolations you are able to achieve a zero energy state in the poi while being able to under go a infinite amount of variation. so by dropping through the various levels of isolation you are able to do a infinite amount of variation.
not that this is needed to prove there is infinite variation in poi i still hold that due to the bio feedback even the most basic moves consist of infinite variation while being identified the same. even as far as moves go there can always be another iteration applied to a move and with no defined period saying poi is limited is just like saying the coke curve is a measurable length. the bounds are where you imagine them because we are dealing with a 4d fractals( i dont see much application of the 11d of of m theory because for the most part the whole big thing about the quantum world and what boggles all the physicists is the rules of the two worlds are very much different. however i liked all the talk about m theory and its application to poi if you guys do make a thread i would deff be interested.)
peace and love and happy spinning!!!