Monday, March 29

intermezzo

As it feels like a bit of SAD is looming, I started considering marketing my tensegrity hobby a bit more, got myself busy building more models and taking some photos. First step will be to get accepted for a stall at an arts market, and then I hope hours of haggling will follow. Naming the sculptures provided quite some fun, let's see what happens next.


Concept X (Simple X-module)

Scarab (Icosahedron with two two tensuls)

Scarab

Crossed Over

North Tower (Three tensuls)

South Tower (Three tensuls)

Evil Twins (Two joined stellated tetrahedrons)

Spherical Hysterical (Thirty strut frequency 2 sphere)

Hope (stellated tetrahedron)

Amarita (stellated tetrahedron)

Victory

Peghead (Tensul joined with icosahedron)
(
21st Century (stellated tetrahedron with kite frame joined)

Monsternsegrity (5 X-modules held up by two tensuls)


Wednesday, March 24

Tough call

I distracted myself from the more and more 'official' uncertainty of my future by working on contact juggling with Matt. Actually, I hardly touched the ball in the turn with him, but instead scrutinized the way I move my arms to play with the ball. As long as I don't get lazy and complacent, juggling and unicycling offer awesome opportunities to improve my use, and get more into the idea of the 'unified field of attention'.

I hardly managed to find someone to work with in the rest of the turn time, somehow I managed to start working with those students who just were about to have a turn with Kaz, first Sharon, then Briar. I noticed some familiar pattern of thought arising while idling, luckily Rossi asked me to help her a bit while she gave a table turn to Amanda.

Libby's writing and research session turned into a bit of Kindergarten. Tony and Ana stopped Libby nearly after each sentence, often just to ask about the exact things that she just said, or wanting to know pretty much unknowable things. The continuous interruptions stretched our sessions out a lot, so that there was no time for some practical work left.

Back home, I notice much I need more debriefing and exchange about our work - frustration and aggression rear their ugly heads again, and I can hardly concentrate on more constructive thoughts. I don't like the idea of organising another intercontinental move, and I have no inspiration where to go after my time in Australia, and how to organise setting up a practise in an entirely new environment. I was aware that making a living as AT teacher won't be a piece of cake, starting over somewhere else looks at the moment like an insurmountable task.

Yet all that desperation won't help to tackle this task, nevertheless I realise how familiar the Don Quixote role seems to me, triggering lots of habitual unproductive coping patterns. Striving for sanity in a mad world doesn't feel like getting into the flow of life, but rather like swimming against the stream. Especially as I don't have any reliable support here, or any positive outlet for all the (self) destructive thoughts whirling through my mind. Well, I gotta keep breathing.

Tuesday, March 23

Taking it slow

I had a chance to jump the queue for our turns, and opted for a table turn with Jenny. I guess I'm tempted at the moment to try hard, so I used the opportunity to slow down and observe. Jenny helped me to release my shoulders quite thoroughly, and I noticed in better detail the connection of my arms into my torso, as well as some habits I acquired while lying on the table. My eyes were fixed a lot of the time, and I pushed my head a tad into the books. When I started observing Jenny, I managed to inhibit this tendencies, and rather started wondering about where she was looking while working with me.

By staying aware of the things I just found out, I learned as well about my tendency to fix my legs on the table. Once I allowed them to slightly balance, I could extend my observation a bit more to my whole body. Instead of wallowing in the release for a longer time on the table, I asked Jenny to lift me off the table, and was surprised about the ease in this movement.

I played a bit with my CJ ball, but then asked Briar, who was next to me in semi-supine, whether I could work with her. Table work on the floor is very challenging, but I was tempted to play with John Appleton's alligator imagery. I don't know whether asking student to imagine things works by distraction, it certainly helps for a more light-hearted approach. I hardly zoned out, and rather stayed with the idea of a good contact with my hands.

The book session got me a bit over-active, yet I managed to stay directed during most of my comments. However, I want to reduce my input a bit - I still get carried away sometimes, especially when we're talking about FM's sociological ideas.

The hands-on group with Jenny challenged me a lot, taking heads from the back of a chair. Having both thumbs directing through the skull and the fingers lightly under the jaw suits group sessions well, and seems less intrusive than one hand unders the jaw and one on the back of the head.

In the second group we explored the changes in tonus of the torso when thinking about different weight distribution in the feet. There's certainly the danger of internalizing while becoming aware of our feet, however, seeing an x-ray showing the relation between calcaneus, patella, tibia and fibula reminded me that our weight arrives in front of the heel and can spread over the entire foot.

Monday, March 15

More tensegrity

Before I muster the task to relate tensegrity to AT, I continue with some experiences I made while building this airy structures. Iron hooks on dowels offer plenty of constructive freedom, as well as the opportunity to install additional tendons in tower structures easily, however, with strut lengths between 15 and 30 cm they seem like an overkill.

To cut down on material costs, and for aesthetic reasons, I switched to grooved bamboo skewers. It's possible to saw a groove even in 3mm skewers, however, it seems like 10 to 15 cm is the maximal length to build solid models. Otherwise the tendons can easier tear the groove apart, or bend the skewer.





Building an icosahedron with 6 struts comes relatively easy, at least with elastic cord which isn't too tense. The stellated tetrahedron (or Snelson tetrahedron) is a bit more challenging. The photo above shows my first approach, fixing three strut ends with a rubber band into their corner of the tetrahedron, attaching the corner triangles, the connecting tendons, and finally, cutting the rubber bands to 'explode' the structure into shape.



The photo above shows a stellated tetrahedron (secured with tape instead of rubber bands), just before it gets liberated from struts forced into touching. Although I deployed this method plenty of times, it felt a bit cumbersome and wasteful to me (tape needs to be really tight to withstand the increasing (over) tension of the model, and many rubber bands were cut and later found in unexpected places).

While playing with different tower constellations, I noticed the nice compatibility between the triangular faces of the stellated tetrahedron and tensuls (minimal tensegrity structures). The 6-level tower I used for my presentation uses stellated tetras as base and top, connected by four tensuls in line. In a Snelson tetrahedron, each corner has the same chirality, I'm quite sure though that I managed to build stable structures with at least one corner out of sync. The corner fixing method does not prevent having the beams meet in the wrong order, elastic cord saved me from starting over from scratch many times.

What if I started with a skewed tensul (small base, large top loop) and extended it to a stellated tetrahedron?


I used nylon (orange) for the surplus connections, and elastic cord for the final structure. Placed on one tip, three struts touch the ground, and three float freely. The end of each ground-touching strut is part of the remaining three corner triangles, so I threaded the elastic cord underneath the nylon cord that secured the temporary tensul. The choice of materials made my life easier - the elastic cords wedged nicely into the grooves without slipping out by themselves (or gravity, or clumsiness on my side).



The tensul provided enough stability to connect the floating beams easily. I had ample opportunity to check that all corners had the same chirality, and then decided to turn the structure around to attach the final tendons. I had to unhook the tensul tendons, which turned out quite easy. The final three tendons had to go underneath the tensul tendons and top triangle. This was a bit more fiddly, yet I encountered no total collapse with the need to start over.



Inspired by the ease of constructing a formerly hard to tackle structure I prepared more struts for the same structure with opposite chirality throughout. Sawing six skewers to size and cutting twelve grooves is the 'mind-numbing' aspect, a great opportunity to stay directed. Precision is a key to tensegrity structures, although there is also a bit room for improvisation. The small diameter makes precision inevitable - having a structure collapse due to a badly crafted groove is not on my list of goals.

I made a game out of the 'boring' part, asking for a 'creamy' quality of the hand guiding the Dremel tool. Although I still appreciate having spare material around, I seem to mess up less and less material. I begin to trust more the inherent qualities of tensegrity models. For one thing, tossing them around accidentally hardly ever decomposed them, and it's straight forward to replace single tendons after the build is complete.

I decided to make my two stellated bamboo tetrahedrons a combination of nylon and elastic cord. Not only do they have opposing chirality, one has elastic triangles, the other elastic tendons, and nylon for the other tension element.



Building this models felt fast and simple, yet there might be a further improvement: If tendons and tension loops have different colours, it's easy to pre-thread all connections underneath the temporary tensul tendons, which then can be simply lifted off once everything is in place.

I didn't stop there, though. With enough material, time and obsession at my hands I started researching the web and came across Snelsons X-module. The photos provided me with an idea how to construct this structure, and another remarkable site offers a java applet that helps finding the lengths for all the tendons.

The Snelson model has only one central tendon (which certainly works with fixed tendon lengths and heavy struts), yet two tendons offer more stability when moved around, and don't depend on gravity and the ground to provide a second tension vector.



Colour the different cord lengths made the assembly a piece of cake, checking the cord lengths after knotting them was my quality assurance measure. The need for a second central tendon was already apparent when I built the above model. Depending on the relation of cord lengths and the viewing angle, the name 'x-module' becomes very obvious.



After finishing the first x-module, I noticed to my surprise that I rebuild a structure that puzzled me for some days when I built it first. On of the 'ugliest' model still remaining in my collection is a 4 strut tensegrity, and I rather kept it as 3d model if I ever wanted to recreate it than for any spectator value. When I started building the X-module, I had no idea that I would end up with something familiar, another indication how confusing it sometimes is to imagine all aspects of a 3d tensegrity structure from photos.

The second surprise belongs to the structural category. You have, more or less, two pairs of x-shaped beams perpendicular to each other. WIth only the tendon shown in the photos for Snelson's structure, my model stayed quite flat. Attaching the second tendon moved the entire structure perpendicular to this tendon. I wonder how this affects a series of connected x-modules, I found some plans for a tower, yet I haven't managed to decode the cord lengths info I need.

After exploring different 'base' moduls - tensuls, stellated tetrahedron, x-module, icosahedron - I get more curious about towers. Craig still recalls my visual demonstration of 'any part affects/reverberates throughout the entire structure', and I want to have some more video of tensegrities in motion. Building a x-module tower looks like an interesting challenge, I hope my trustworthy bamboo won't break under the load.

Tuesday, March 2

Surprise

I had a great turn with Jane, who gave me the opportunity to put hand on her. By doing less, I managed to get her easily in and out of the chair, although I had to inhibit my surprise over the ways we were moving. All that ease remains hard to grasp, yet I could clearly notice the change in thinking when working with her.

Before I had a chance to catch with the reading for today, David asked me to give Jeanine a table turn. She's looking for a school to become AT teacher, a graduated contact juggler and circus skill teacher expanding her toolkit. I managed to lengthen her a bit on the table, and her rotary cuffs released a bit, yet her use looks impressive already, and her observation skills stunned me as well.

I had little clue about her background while working with her, when she had a look at my CJing she came up straight away with real useful tips and observations.

So much I'd like to write more, my computer reacts currently much slower than a serially connected real VT100 terminal. So kann ich net arbeite! Time to order new hardware, before the wait drives me mad.

A restart alleviated the tardy behaviour, yet the order is out, in a day or two I have my new hardware. I hope the increased working speed will allow me to balance my screen work with building more tensegrity models. Rossi asked me whether she could buy one of the models from my workshop. I think I will raise the prize from today's offer to a coffee with company, it's still a fair deal.

Monday, March 1

Tensegrity




David offered me the opportunity to do my tensegrity workshop during our school's residential. This meant that my car was heavily loaded with plenty of light objects, sensory overload by having a variety of models was part of my plan.

I got so much used to have tensegrity models in my lounge that I nearly forgot the awe they inspire quite often on first sight. Martin hardly couldn't keep his hands off them while driving to Maitripa, and I knew that the strategy of using them as attention grabber would make the presentation part much easier.

I arranged plenty of the smaller and simpler models on the table next to the stage area, the tower and the larger sphere standing next to me. The mind map I made half a year ago laid on a table close by as well, yet I think I used it only a couple of times.



I wasn't tempted to rehearse the presentation, yet I took the chance to work in front of the group with Michael Shellshear on my nervousness about it. He helped me defining a clear goal, and suggested to have a clear beginning, middle part and end for the presentation. Finding a SMART goal wasn't easy, tensegrity offers so many ideas and connections to the work, and of course, eagerly end-gaining as I can be, I wanted to put a lot information into the workshop.

My idea was it to give the participants a more embodied understanding of tensegrity, and to learn more about the qualities of such systems in general. Yet Michael steered me into finding a single quality as focus - bounciness. I'm pretty sure he set some anchors when working with me, although I couldn't consciously describe them.



I started off with a short explanation of the origin of the term, letting my admiration for Buckminster Fuller shining through. I used the metaphor 'island of compression in a sea of tension' to describe the discontinuity of compression (we're no stack of bricks, although some people's thinking is sometimes as flexible as one).

I used to model with a similar structure, but with different tension material (rubber, ie very flexible and nylon ie very tense) to give the participants the first opportunity to play. The models nicely demonstrate expansion and contraction in all dimensions, and squeezing and pulling made the difference in mobility depending on the pretension level (golgi, I hear ya calling) obvious.

I felt quite calm and collected, the adrenaline didn't throw me off but kept me moving confidently. Before I could lose the interest of my audience by the technicalities of the minimal tensegrity system (tensul), making pauses in the verbal part allowed questions, so I could navigate along the mindmap in response to my audience.

The fun started for me when I explained the teamwork task, the 'middle' part of the workshop. I demonstrated the total collapse of a tensul from a box shape into a hodge podge of strings and sticks, and asked the participants to do the same with the models I handed them before.

I had no idea how long it would take the groups to get the models back together, I still consider even a tensul quite a challenging 3d puzzle. I could kick back a bit, observe the attempts of rebuilding with plenty of space to offer help and answer questions. The first team to succeed were Rossi and Jenny, proudly claiming to have won this friendly 'competition'. Yet, instead of simply bragging about this victory they continued to explore kinestically their little toys, while the other teams by and by caught up.

In the two presentations I held no team failed in the end, although some needed to start over a couple of times (you can connect the materials I gave them to a boxy shape which isn't a real tensul). The task kept the participants engaged and interested, and the success yielded many smiles of accomplishment.

This made it easy to get to end part of the workshop. Playing with the tensuls brought up some questions, and offered me the chance to relate the tensegrity idea to anatomy and AT work. Well, I might have stressed the similarities I suspect a bit more, but I guess I will do this workshop again. The questions were interesting, and especially the demonstrations with the shroom-tower model seems to work very well.

I took Carina's suggestion to ask everyone for a single bit they learned in that workshop, and noticed that I achieved my goal - transforming the term 'tensegrity' from a learned-sounding expression to a more lively concept.

However, in retrospect areas for improvement become more apparent. Bounciness, the initial goal, was left out a bit. I realised at home that some of models can be thrown around quite a bit without falling apart, I might use a sphere model for some contact juggling like acts, with some deliberate drops to show the bounce. Now I need to find a good backdrop to shoot some videos of models in movement (the hall I held the workshop with its beautiful Buddha statue would have been ace for that).

Luckily Ana took the photos you can see here, pictures can often tell so much more than words.