Flow Arts

I returned from a trip to Canada not too long ago. Now, in the past, every time I’ve hung out with Katelyn, I’ve had a hundred and one poi ideas to share with her. And, invariably, both of us would forget what I did. So this time, when I started showing her things, she stopped me and made me get my phone out so she could video what I did. ...

Unintentional alliteration aside, I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while but didn’t quite know what to say. Before we go on, I invite you to watch this video. No, really, watch it. Read more about positive psychology here Breaking up the learning process One of the things that so appeals to me about object manipulation disciplines in general is the progressive nature of the learning process. ...

My friend Mark Steyn, an awesome contact juggler just posted this quick short of him doing a routine in London. Well worth a look!

It’s been an age since I got a clip of myself just jamming with my poi, but we managed to get one when I went north to Arbroath to visit a friend. It was an amazing day and there was nobody around for miles so we had ourselves a play session! While it’s not hugely varied, it serves as a nice reminder for me to mix things up some and to remember long-forgotten or little-used moves and patterns as at the moment, I need reminding that variety is the spice of life! ...

While browsing the web looking at videos, I stumbled across a series of clips that were shot on regular 30 or 60 FPS cameras like mine and then slowed way down with incredible results. I was intrigued, as one would naturally be by such tech. I discovered that folks did this with a plugin called Twixtor, which through some mathematical wizardry does some highly impressive things with frame interpolation. What this means is that is seamlessly inserts additional frames between your existing ones in order to slow down the action by quite remarkable amounts. ...

 Nom nom nomWay back – well, it’s been about 2 weeks – Karsten came over to the UK to hang out with us. We went to an epic free beach party and spent the wee hours of the morning wandering the banks of the Thames. We watched the sun rise over Tower Bridge and generally had a great time. That was Saturday night. Sunday morning, we crashed out, woke up in the late afternoon and then spent the day playing with poi. ...

Flow arts – poi, staff, clubs, juggling, contact, etc – are all arts for the body. Yet, this amazing, flexible, beautiful and vital piece of the puzzles goes ignored for the longest time! This is a recurring trait that I see over and over among new budding flow artists. It most often manifests in the tendency to plant your feet close together and pretend to be a tree while playing. ...

Nick finally OK’d Karen’s video that’s been floating around the Facebooks in secret (shh) for the last month or so and I can now officially share it with the world. Honestly, don’t go to Bali. It’s a horrible place and there is no fun to be had there whatsoever. It’s really cold, wet, boring and there are no fun people there at all. Oh wait.

I’m currently in Aberdeen, catching up with some creative folks I have not seen for a long time and among other things, we’ve been shooting portraits and images of ourselves performing with fire which I would like to share! Enjoy! Spiral Wrap  

My friend Max edited together his videos from Bali and posted them. Contains humour and hilarity and scenes of a fun nature!

Came across this lovely gem in a poi video and it’s a beauty to flow to! https://youtu.be/oc-ZQftx1Jg

As promised in my earlier post, I’ve thrown together a quick video on the subject of ground-state moves. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful!

I shot this a good while back – about a year ago, in fact – in Bali but never got around to putting it up. It’s a beautiful tattoo a friend has – what makes it special is that it is done by using individual dots instead of continuous ink through a machine. It’s much more intricate and generally gorgeous. I think you’ll agree!

I want to introduce folks to a concept I’ve been thrashing out in my head while teaching. I call it ‘ground-state’ moves. The Lead-up While playing around with a bunch of new stuff that I had seen in various videos on YouTube – Rastaxel, PoiBoy, Drex, Alien Jon, G, etc – I came across countless moves that looked awesome and appeared to flow very well and were actually very simple at the core. ...

After ages and ages of playing with my camera, getting some great shots and really enjoying them, I realised that all I did was dump them to my hard drive, edit them and then utterly fail to share any of them! So, in order to remedy that, here are a bunch of cool shots that I took at various stages but have forgotten to reveal, until now It’s great to dig through and find shots you’ve forgotten about! ...

Ok, so as I mentioned in my previous post on the topic – I made some lovely new Tornado wicks (so called after the Tornado weave that is used to make them), following Jez’s instructions on the topic and with some modifications that Alien Jon and I came up with. On Sunday I got the chance to play with them alight and after some fairly heavy thrashing I can now post a pretty balanced review. ...

The backstory So for a while I’ve been researching into making some new fire poi heads to replace my HoP 90mm monkeyfist heads that I got from Alien Jon. The monkeys are great but they’re heavy and because they’re spherical, they tend to smack into one another frequently which annoys me somewhat. Added to which, they have a massive I-bolt embedded in the core and the eyelet of the bolt is absolutely enormous – about 30mm across. ...

Nick Woolsey of Playpoi posted this video on his blog and I thought I’d share. It’s a clip of a Thai guy making ice tea in the flow style! Enjoy!