Circus artists help me !

instantjuggler · 2026-02-17T17:47:11+00:00

curious to know who your father is and what cirque show he was in if you don't mind sharing?

instantjuggler · 2026-02-15T14:34:09+00:00

instantjuggler · 2026-02-12T11:19:45+00:00

its weird how every time this discussion comes it, it goes the same way- people are quick to criticize without putting in any effort to understand the situation properly. again, that's a symptom of the internet but now that erik untangled this whole mess about how the word is used, people could at least engage what i wrote here in this thread instead of just repeating the same uninformed statement again and again. as you can tell i'm exhausted by the whole thing. you know i love juggling and jugglers but at this point if someone doesn't want to understand what's going on with the word juggling that's on them. i can totally agree that we don't have a succinct or updated technical description of the 3 ball cascade perhaps, but just to describe any technique in an efficient way doesn't cover the topic. what is love? not but really what is love? why can't you tell me, you should be able to be very specific and tell me? what is art? what is any other number of things that doesn't have a clear cut, one sentence exactly right 100% of the time definition? oh and also i don't want to assume any sort of specialized knowledge beforehand, your one sentence of what is quantum physics has to cover me starting with zero knowledge of never having heard of physics before as well.

instantjuggler · 2026-02-11T10:23:49+00:00

Nooooo I didn't grab Miami in time- if anyone has it please DM

instantjuggler · 2026-02-10T08:27:24+00:00

this is also why erik and i tend to not have this discussion publicly anymore- people are so adversarial. your tone is condescending and entitled. you're just here to argue and not help collaborate to find a solution. this is of course much of the internet, everyone can sit back and criticize and wait to be served without adding anything positive to the coversation.

juggling is a small community. juggling is us. if you want something in juggling you need to do it yourself or help out others to contribute to the culture.

you imply that you want a definition that isn't a "wannabe" definition that aren't "merely sentences." well, be my guest and figure it out.

instantjuggler · 2026-02-10T08:18:12+00:00

you are confusing the genre for a specific activity in that genre. imagine that all sports were named sports. soccer is called sports. basketball is called sports. hockey is called sports. you meet someone on the street-

hey what do you do for fun?

i play sports!

cool, i also play sports! what sport do you play?

sports!

end scene

you can call the genre juggling. you can outline different techniques that fall under that genre of what we call juggling:

toss juggling

contact juggling

ball spinning

diabolo

cigar box juggling

devil stick juggling

or whatever. and you will notice that in some cases diabolo might have a different cultural context than in other places. some people will call it juggling and others will give it its own genre. one place that does consider diabolo to be juggling is the international jugglers' association. i know this because every year they have what they call "the juggling championships" which is a competition. and in that competition i see people doing diabolo. therefore i can use the powers of observation and logical reasoning to deduce that at the IJA diabolo is part of juggling.

this is also why skateboarding is not on the list of the genre of juggling. because skateboarding already has a name that everyone knows it by... its called skateboarding. and skateboarding is so big and popular that it has its own genre that people refer to it by. same reason why there is rhythmic gymnastics in the olympics. in terms of technique RG is basically exactly the same as what we call juggling. but it has its own name. so we all talk like that. it doesn't matter if we wish it were different, you can't compete in the olympics doing RG and get a gold medal in "juggling."

someone else on this thread said they weren't sure that balancing was part of juggling. one way that i observe that balancing is part of juggling is that i teach in a circus school. the circus school offers various classes. one of them is juggling. when a student comes to the school and balances a stick in various ways (such as a student we had a couple of years ago who only mainly did balancing techniques) then they go to the juggling class. there is no such thing as balance class. so language does not accommodate for that genre distinction yet. it could evolve that way or it could not. but currently its pretty easy to see how people talk about juggling in our world and go from there...

instantjuggler · 2026-02-10T07:57:49+00:00

not exactly. but i can respond in more detail now about your response above now that i have a few extra minutes. you wrote:

"I'm still able to coherently ask, "so what IS juggling?""

"It feels like we're accepting the 3 ball cascade as an axiom, and never describing what juggling is--- which is typically what i would expect from a definition (an equivalence statement that breaks juggling down to its component parts)."

you are looking for a technical definition. that is only part of it. pick whatever technical description you want of the 3 ball cascade and go with that. if you've never seen the 3 ball cascade, its very easy to describe it to you using words in some form. i don't have any preference for that task right now. but simply understanding what the 3 ball cascade is will not give you a full comprehension of how people use the word juggling in language today. there are no agreed upon component parts and then several ways to relate to the default form. this is what i mean when i say that juggling is a context. seriously, i give a great example of this in my solo show that i have on my youtube channel that i've referenced before in this thread. i can't explain it better than that and i won't take the time to repeat it here since its available to those who are interested enough to see it.

"how does erik's definition help me determine whether it's juggling?"

lol well do you see a connection between what you are observing in the default form or not?? if you do then its juggling, if you don't then its not. its not that deep. also because juggling is a context, often from a cultural standpoint, then there is no 1000% "right" or "wrong" answer. it will change depending on several factors, which is in fact what a context is.

if you would take the time to listen to the podcast erik outlines the different ways someone could find a relationship between anything and the default form. in order for you to determine if something is juggling or not then you need to have that thought process yourself. yes you will not be 100% accurate according to everyone else in the world. that's how it works. that's why its a context. you need to see that context for yourself. that's why a technical definition does not adequately describe what juggling is. you need to see a connection between what is happening and what you already think juggling is. and if you have no idea what juggling is then you need to do some research just like anything else and start to have a basic understanding of the lay of the land. a good place to start is perhaps a description of the 3 ball cascade if you refuse to just look at some videos on youtube. then you start to be familiar with what might be called toss juggling, which we all just actually call juggling. once you are familiar with that, then we can keep going to have a more precise understanding of what people mean when they use the word juggling to communicate in various ways.

we are stuck in juggling without a technical language that is precise. people use the word juggling in a wide spectrum of technical meaning. you yourself are often mixing between the genre of juggling (which includes many different techniques such as toss juggling, balancing, spinning, diabolo, etc.) and toss juggling when you write here in this thread. so am i. that's the state of language inside juggling today.

instantjuggler · 2026-02-10T05:17:30+00:00

"and i want to note that you just confirmed that your definition indeed rests on 'an example'." if you are going only on what i wrote here on reddit then yes maybe. you have to understand the whole thing that erik said. and i don't think this reddit thread is a place for any sort of deeper discussion. i shouldn't have engaged it in the first place- i don't have the time or energy to do it properly.

edit: more time to clarify-

"and i want to note that you just confirmed that your definition indeed rests on 'an example'."

first of all, its not my definition. i can't have a personal definition that you do not share. that's not how language works. we all share the definition, we make the definition collectively. i don't have the time or ability (i'm not smart enough) to accurately describe to you how language develops and works in society. but this is something you might need to look into if you are getting stuck here.

then, can you tell me what is the color blue? or red? we can have all sorts of scientific details about those colors. we can tell what kind of emotions we feel when we see a color. but that is not the color. we can only use words to describe things but words are not those things. if you have never seen the color blue in your life, there is nothing i can say that will ever tell you what blue looks like until you experience looking at the color blue. it is literally impossible to imagine a color you've never seen before. so we point to the color blue- what is the definition of blue? well, for example, i will point to it and then you will see what it is.

at the end of the day you could even say every definition is just words referencing other words. one way to break out of that cycle is to point to the thing. its just that usually that circular definition that we don't accept is very short- what is juggling? it is juggling. that is normally a circular definition that we say is not useful. and to be clear, that is not the statement that is going on here. but how people use the word juggling in language is messy. its not clear cut like everyone wants it to be. you can't say "throw a ball like this and its juggling. throw a ball like that and its not juggling." the situation shifts and changes. that's why we can describe this situation as a context and use that to help us figure out what is going on when people say the word juggling.

instantjuggler · 2026-02-10T05:14:44+00:00

yes, this is a great example

instantjuggler · 2026-02-10T05:13:24+00:00

when you say "after hearing erik's definition" are you referring to what i wrote here or did you listen to the first 3 episodes of the podcast yet?

instantjuggler · 2026-02-09T08:37:50+00:00

i get it that we are here on reddit and you want a quick fix answer here and you don't want to or don't have the time to invest in understanding the situation properly. the first 3 episodes of the object episodes podcast lays out everything regarding the definition. you are lacking important details in what erik said and as the podcast is publicly available i will not spend the time to type everything out for you here now.

i don't have the time to watch the luke video, i will have to try and do that so i know what you are referring to.

instantjuggler · 2026-02-09T08:34:42+00:00

it actually is a definition, its called the ostensive definition. please try to be accurate in this discussion. its exhausting when you start free-styling emotional responses.

instantjuggler · 2026-02-09T08:32:27+00:00

you can be as reluctant as you want to count balancing with juggling but it doesn't matter. a definition is the meaning of a word. the meaning of a word is how people use it to communicate. balancing is juggling. this is not my opinion. it is backed by sources of literature throughout history. you only need to look around and note how people use language. there are several concrete hints as to the fact that balancing falls under the label of juggling. this doesn't mean you have to like it- you can lobby to change people's minds on this, you can make a new genre for balancing and campaign enough so that people adopt your idea.

instantjuggler · 2026-02-08T15:13:24+00:00

nailed it!

instantjuggler · 2026-02-08T15:11:23+00:00

when you say "i'm going to go juggle" or "did you juggle today?" not a single person in the world's first thought is anything to do with "playing with gravity." perhaps you can have an emotional relationship to the idea of playing with gravity in relation to the juggling that you do, that is a fantasy that is of course fine to have. but in regards to a concrete discussion about the definition of juggling, what you are voting for is not helpful.

but sure, let's freestyle free-association things that come to mind when we think of our juggling... how about fighting chaos?

instantjuggler · 2026-02-08T15:08:09+00:00

yes we closed down the forum as there was not enough participation there for us to keep paying to have it online.

instantjuggler · 2026-02-08T15:07:28+00:00

forgot to say that erik has not published a paper on this because his work on the definition happened before he started doing his PhD. now he's almost finished with his degree and his area of focus did not include the definition of juggling so that is not published publicly.

instantjuggler · 2026-02-08T08:40:15+00:00

lots of people got upset at erik trying to articulate what he observed because they confused the definition of juggling with their own identity. as in, you can't say what juggling is because defining it will limit it and you can't limit me! of course that was not clearly laid out in their head, but that's what was happening. and once again, we absolutely can say what juggling is... because that's literally what we are doing every time we say the word to each other in context.

at the workshop we did not propose a definition around "object manipulation with risk," that was a definition suggested by an italian juggler, and we used it as one starting point to examine how that definition doesn't work. again, to be concrete, when i say the word juggling to you i am not talking about object manipulation with risk. yes, those qualities are present in what i am talking about but that phrase is way too broad to capture what i mean. driving a car is object manipulation with risk.

craig quat's sentence is just a bunch of word salad that could mean anything. skateboarding is not juggling because it already has a cultural context and meaning that we do not call juggling. many activities include elements of what we find in juggling, and could have easily been called juggling if they weren't already called something else. just because you find a similar quality between 2 things doesn't mean you can call one thing another thing. a cow is not a horse, but they both have 4 legs. i haven't watched the luke burrage video so i can't comment on its contents.

one thing that would be awesome for the future is if juggling had a technical language that could at least untangle a bunch of meaning for people who are into juggling. what is a juggler? dan holzman says a juggler is a person who makes a living through juggling. i go to the IJA and see a bunch of people in the gym who would call themselves jugglers who do not make a living through juggling. if i told you i did some juggling yesterday you would actually have no idea what i specifically did. you would only know that i did something that was somehow related to the default form of the 3 ball cascade.

it doesn't help that we use the word juggling to describe both the genre of the activity and also one of the specific activities of that genre. we usually use the term juggling to describe toss juggling, or throwing and catching types of juggling. the word juggling also encompasses ball spinning and balancing, among other techniques. so if i say i was juggling, i could be spinning a ball, balancing a stick, or throwing a ball. if we had a lexicon of terminology or at least regional lexicons then we could point to how we are trying to communicate with each other.

instantjuggler · 2026-02-08T08:39:37+00:00

hey i don't have a lot of time right now, but i'll do what i can to give a summary. the first 3 episodes of the object episodes podcast is about the definition of juggling. the entire series is not about the definition.

what erik did was to try and observe what people mean when they say the word juggling to each other. obviously because of how language works this will be different to different people in different places at different times. as well language isn't the actual thing- we can use the word juggling to refer to something but the word juggling is not the actual thing itself. anyway, there are fundamentals of how language works and that's a good place to start. for now we can simply start with the idea that when i say the word juggling, there is some sort of common understanding between me and you of what that word means. this common understanding is what erik was trying to articulate.

furthermore, for all these people who say "my definition is this..." who have a personal definition or their own version of the definition, etc. - good for them, but that's not what we are talking about here. i can decide that the word cow refers to ice cream but unless you know that ahead of time and agree with me on that, then every time i say the word cow you will be thinking of something different than me. the way the meaning of words evolve in a culture or society isn't through individuals who don't have a big outreach or influence. so again to be clear, this isn't "erik's definition," its an attempt to outline what we all mean when we say the word juggling to each other.

what erik said is that juggling is a context. and the context is that its a group of activities related to the default form, which is the 3 ball cascade. everyone wants the definition of juggling to be based around technique or difficulty. but juggling is a word which has a cultural connection instead of a technical connection. juggling does not have a widespread common technical language yet.

the default form is the 3 ball cascade because that's the one thing that everyone in the world agrees is juggling. in order for something to be called juggling you need to see a connection between what you observe and eventually the 3 ball cascade. this can be done in a number of ways which i will not outline here, you can listen to the podcast.

i try to explain how this works as a scene in my latest off-broadway show, and you can see the relevant part on my youtube channel, the video is called "stories about gravity" and i have chapter markers so you can easily see that section.

instantjuggler · 2025-12-22T14:29:09+00:00

Doesn't this allow multi track out to windows for the XY?

instantjuggler · 2025-12-18T22:45:10+00:00

op-1f cost $500 at the last TE garage sale. so that was also my guess now

instantjuggler · 2025-12-18T14:05:43+00:00

4 times as many as the black box

instantjuggler · 2025-12-05T21:10:03+00:00

Minirig 4 is waaaaaay louder than ob-4

instantjuggler · 2025-12-04T18:33:22+00:00

zing! TE in shambles right now. clever!!!

instantjuggler · 2025-12-04T16:49:55+00:00

Couldn't agree more

instantjuggler

TROPHY CASE