triquetra

The Poi Heresies: why 3-petal antispin flowers are not triquetras

What is a triquetra?

For most of the past year, triquetra has been synonymous with three-petal antispin flowers and in some cases the hybrids that can be created by combining them with other patterns. Nick Woolsey even posted this video, explaining the concept and the term and its significance to poi spinning in general. After doing the math, however, I've come to the conclusion that what we describe as triquetras don't actually match the visual or mathematical properties of triquetras at all and that a couple of the conclusions we've reached based upon this assumption are false.

Your rating: None Average: 2.3 (3 votes)

Vector graphics of poi patterns

As I've played around with my soft and hard transition ideas, I've found it helpful to move around the hand and poi paths of some popular moves in Illustrator and other graphics editing programs, but my technique for doing so has left a lot to be desired. Essentially, I've been putting the proper variables into an online spirograph program (located at http://wordsmith.org/anu/java/spirograph.html and mirrored below), taking a screencapture of the result, and importing it into Illustrator using the livetrace function.

Your rating: None Average: 1.8 (5 votes)

Vesica Piscis charts

Whoops! I just rewatched my video on vesica piscis soft transitions and realized I'd promised to post the charts I'd used to work through these transitions and never did. Here they are, along with the original video--they depict a series of soft transitions from cateyes to triquetras and vice versa in which the overlap in hand paths between the triquetras resembles the vesica piscis pattern sometimes seen in sacred geometry. Enjoy!

Your rating: None Average: 1.3 (16 votes)

Drex's Tech Poi Blog #214: Composites vs CAPs

Last video we rolled through three different approaches to defining CAPs. Here is an alternate approach to breaking down such motions: a couple years ago, Alien Jon introduced me to the idea of spinning composites. Compositing is chaining together increments of poi movement that overlap in hand and poi position to either create repeatable patterns or transition and shift seamlessly between patterns.

No votes yet

Drex's Tech Poi Blog #209: Third-order quarter time chase

This was a fun journey: over the weekend my friend Sean Stogner in New York reminded me of a move Marvin Ong and I had worked on in center camp at Burning Man this past year. It's a variant of the diamond split into two triquetras but each hand is working a different split, so they overlap in a quadrant. After experimenting with switching which hand was doing which split, I realized it was leading toward a third-order motion in which the hands would chase each other while the poi phased between quarter and split-time same direction.

No votes yet

Drex's Tech Poi Blog #202: QFT hybrid family analysis

The companion video to Tech Blog 200--this one on how to find hybrid families using QFT (poi) notation. I highly recommend watching this in 720 and full screen so you can see all the numbers on the whiteboard. For some background, I highly recommend checking out my blog entry on the basics of QFT here:

http://drexfactor.com/weirdscience/2011/05/18/beginners_guide_poi_qft_no...

No votes yet

Drex's Tech Poi Blog #198: Contact poi hybrids

I've been mapping out hybrids lately that utilize a relationship between the hands and realized I'd been assuming the handle was synonymous with the hands. I then started to think about cases in which the handles could be together but not necessary have the hands together. The first hybrid I played with seemed too easy, so I started doing it with an outer forearm roll and it led both to  isolation vs extension and triquetra vs pendulum hybrids.

No votes yet

Drex's Tech Poi Blog #197: Opposite same-time triquetra vs pendulum hybrids

Over the weekend I started messing around with a slightly different approach to triquetra vs pendulum and found it opened up some transition points I rarely use but found to be really fun to incorporate into my flow. In this case I was playing with triquetra vs pendulum with the hands in opposites same-time and looking to the transition points on either side of the pattern, which can access static vs extension or same time same direction hybrids.

No votes yet

Drex's Tech Poi Blog #196: Poi head catching patterns

Here's another trick Ronan was showing off on the playa--based in pendulum vs CAP, he was doing a catch with the poi head that would then be used to shift the center of the pattern to either side. Another option was throwing the poi head vertically to enter static vs triquetra. I don't often play with head catching tricks, but these have a really fascinating capacity for shifting an audience's point of attention.

No votes yet

Drex's Tech Poi Blog #195: Interior stall transitions

In Tahoe, G showed me this nifty interior stall pattern he'd been playing with that I'd at first thought to be a mere curiosity. It involved searching for transitions where the hands were crossed and so were the poi, but as we continued to play with it, a nifty hybrid pattern came out and later G pointed out that Ronan's triquetra fractal could be used as an intermediary trick. Here are all the transitions we found that week.

No votes yet