old chinese picture (1888)

david cain send me this pic from 1888 yesterday... it´s beautiful, thx david

Origins of Devilstick

The origins of Devilsticks

Hey everyone, so the discussion about the origins of our beloved prop pooped up once again on facebook which motivated me to write down my thoughts on this topic

As far as i know this is the first bulletproof proof for the existence of Devilstick and it´s from 1820.

The Samme Brothers claimed to be Indians but at that time performers usually claimed to be from some exotic countrys and learned their skills from there because exotic acts could be sold very well

It´s safe to assume that devilsticks has been around for a long time before. If it has been invented and cultivated in Asia we can assume that it travelled from there to europe around 1700 when travel and trading between Europe and Asia became more common.

Two other options are that they´ve been invented by the Maya or in ancient Greek.

The Greek theorie would fit with the rumours about the name coming from greek Dia-bolos, and Mayas been pretty bad ass  so why not.

While we can´t track down the origins i believe that there are questions people forget to ask.

How and in which context could Devilstick have been invented ?

If we look at early humans history i´d say the first two tools we found were stones and sticks.

Well basicly thats all they got in the stone age, and what better way to research and learn to manipulate tools then playing with them. Even if we look at modern kids with access to television and all, i bet it´s pretty save to say that every child has at one point in his life played with a stick.

And damn… there are many ways to play with a stick… fighting (hitting two sticks together), balancing, hitting a ball with a stick (baseball, tennis, snooker), passing a stick between one and another with hands and feet (or two small other sticks held in the hands), twirling motions, juggling 3 sticks clubstyle…

i believe all of this techniques are pretty instinctiv and if we combine them with the pendulum motion that can be observed a lot in our nature… we get the basic tictoc/idle

Another things that makes me believe in early flowersticks is that a flowerstick could be build pretty easy and there could been a strong motivation to do it.

1. sticks hurt, a stick wrapped in leather or fur doesnt
2. sticks are hard to manipulate, flowersticks arent
3. sticks look lame, a decorated stick doesnt

If we look at the origins in this way i believe that people just had to find the prop and techniques to play with it and the same way two jugglers can invented the same trick without knowing each other; it´s possible that ancient stick play has more than one origin (has been invented at several places and several times) or that the combination of different styles of stick play led to this toy.

The next question i rarely heard asked is… why china ?

because it´s said everywhere but so far i have found zero proof

here are some reasons why i believe it was not invented in china

• The first juggling pics were found in Egypt.
• There´s not even a proof i am aware of that the Diabolo was invented there, only the oldest proof is from China which doesnt mean it could´ve been invented somewhere else and then was cultivated there
• Im not aware of Devilsticks as part of traditional chinese circus (which is super traditional with acts being past over and over for centuries.
• There are very few DS Players in China.
• I was there for an two week exchange as a teenager… nobody i meet had seen DS  before.

so my last question for now.

if it was invented so early, why is there this huge gap where we know nothing about ? why is it so hard to find evidence.

My theory is that it has been a “childrens game” most of the time and well, there´s no need to write a book about some kids playing with sticks in the dirt and it´s not the nicest thing to paint either. Also i believe there was a time when other tois  (better produced, easyer to play, more fun, better to play in large groups etc) just displaced flowerstick until it was found by performers/circus people and was reinvented with large knowledge about object manipulation and a motivation to do crazy stick tricks that was not only playing games but amazing people and making money out of it

i guess that was about most of my thinking on this...

feel free to discuss, comment, come up with even crazyer ideas...

One Playlist to rule them all...

Well it´s quite obvious that despite my will to write awesome articles i mainly use my blog to post any Devilstick Video that i consider to be awesome in one or the other way.

I decided to put all of them in one playlist (and i added some more that i had in an older playlist or liked over the years.

so here it is 71 videos (at the moment) and over 4 hours playtime...

have fun and a happy new year

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHmPixc2mNAtwbCahr2l8QQ1fDrc-jREC

Lukas Reichenbach - Devilstick Act

 decided to upload some old stuff... so have fun with my newest old act

 

a little devilstick piece

  played this at a convention last week, it´s late gone write more tomorrow... maybe... been busy rehearsing a show.... it´s awesome ... good night

Devil's Triangle and other devil stick tricks

 i was looking for another oldschool circus act but instead remembered of this gem

A had a chance to play a similar build few times and it was super hard, super weird, a lot of fun and lots and lots of possibilitys. I´m pretty sure there are more interesing shapes out there but i´m to lazy to make them so if anybodys in the mood i´d love to see:  S-shape, + as well as + shaped handsticks, circles, squares, a pentagram and 4 small (halfdevilsticks) combined in a center so that all non center endings are as far away from each other as possible

More Robot Sticking

I was pretty excited yesterday when i found out there´s are Devilstick Robots out there so i was writting an email to the puplishers of the "real time learning with locally weighted statistical learning" and got an answer from Stefan Schaal with a link featuring videos of the robot learning to hold a balance on his eight try and mastering the idle in about 50 trys.

here is the link

http://www-clmc.usc.edu/Resources/ResourcesMoviesRobotLearningOfMotorControl


as you can see, it´s totally awesome... thank you Mr Schaal

Sarcoman Robot with Luna Sticks

What... this has been out there since 2006 and i havent found it yet ? well thats over now omg so awesome

Devilsticks in Science

Well jugglers been researching Devilsticks for quite some time but it
turns out that there are actually scientists researching Devilsticks
too.

i guess you´ve seen some of the juggling robots
that have been developed and it looks like someone in Tokio is working
on Devilsticks too. It seems to be a pretty early stage and the motion
shown in the videos is far away from an robot doing a real Devilstick
Propeller but still im excited


http://www.sc.ctrl.titech.ac.jp/SCHP/research/index.php?lang=e&page=DevilStick


then theres this paper called: "real time learning with locally weighted statistical learning" featuring a robot who, if i understand everything right" was able to learn a idle/tictoc and maintain it for several hundred tics.

http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/svijayak/publications/schaal-ICRA2000.pdf

here is a longer article which features a picture of the Robot

http://wwwiaim.ira.uka.de/users/rogalla/WebOrdnerMaterial/JugleLearning.pdf


the other thing i found is a puplication called "Feedback control of enduring rotary motion of devil stick" it´s super sciency and focussing on the propeller instead of the idle/tictoc

you can find and read the whole thing here

http://www.researchgate.net/publicatio/4057544_Feedback_control_of_enduring_rotary_motion_of_devil_stick


researching a bit more i remembered two videos featuring science and devilsticks

first we have a Devilstick Drop Test, which basicly tells you when you´ve
dropped which i believe to be pretty useless but hey... science

then we have a professor doing an awesome job using a flowerstick to explain the center of gravity to his students

 

NOBODY NEEDS MORE SHITTY FLOWERSTICK TUTORIALS

When it comes to Devilsticks i´m a nerd, part of beeing a nerd is to regulary check youtube for new videos i missed somehow (which rarely happens).
I´m doing this for quite some time and week after week there are new so called helpful tutorials showing usually a boy between the age of 8 and 15 doing a tic tac with very bad form (handsticks hold at the end , bad posture, ne pendulum movement just hitting those damn sticks) to then explain random moves they obviously haven´t mastered themselfes yet.

And often enough it´s not even one single video but a few posted within few days in between as if the 6 clicks the video got so far would be a clear signal that the world needs more shitty devilstick tutorial. I first realised this trend two years agowhen a friend got into a discussion with one of these brats after commenting on of these aand giving some advice.

Assuming on average one of these tutorials are uploaded each day this means that there are at least 1000 of these. Now the thing is with a few exeptions nobody seems to watch them, actually there have to be hundrets of these, that haven´t been viewed by anyone... but me.

The poor me that just have to go sure to leave nothing unchecked and also using the opportunity to once again get mad. And thats what i´m going to do now.

A. IF YOU ARE USING A FLOWERSTICK DON`T CALL IT A DEVILSTICK BECAUSE IT`S A FUCKING FLOWERSTICK

B. IF YOU DON`T HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY THEN SHUT UP INSTEAD OF MUMMBLING STUPID SHIT

C: DON`T HOLD YOURE FREAKING HANDSTICKS AT THE END HOLD THEM IN THE MIDDLE

D: DON`T CALL YOURSELF A PRO, because it´s neither nice nor are you a professionel actually U SUCK, i´ve seen DOGS DOING MORE IMPRESSIVE STICK MANIPULATION

E: ITS NOT GETTING BETTER IF YOU USE SLOWMOTION

F: IF YOU WANT TO MAKE A HELI TUTORIAL WHY DON`T SEARCH IF THERE IS ONE ALREADY (hint there a several and most of them suck, if you have one uploaded, yes your´s propably sucks too)

G: NOBODY CARES (well i do but not the way you planed it) SO DON`T WASTE YOUR TIME WITH  THOSE CRAPPY NEITHER FUNNY NOR BEAUTIFUL VIDEO EDITING BULLSHIT.

H: WHATS WRONG WITH ALL UR BODYS, UR ONLY DEVILSTICKING THERES NO NEED TRYING TO LOOK LIKE FUCKING GLÖCKNER OF NOTREDAM

I: DON`T CALL YOURSELF AMAZING EITHER, YOU SUCK AND IF YOU REALLY WERE A DEVILSTICK MASTER THEN I`D PROPAPLY HEARD ABOUT U BEFORE

J: IF YOU ONLY HAVE BEEN DOING IT FOR AN HOUR; A DAY OF A WEEK WHY DO YOU THINK PEOPLE NEED TO SEE IT

K: EITHER USE NO MUSIK OR EDIT GOOD MUSIC BUT SHUT UP THE SHIT YOUR RADIO OR YOUTUBES PLAYING RIGHT NOW AND HOW ABOUT HOLDING THE DAMN CAMERA STILL FOR ONE SINGLE SECOND


L: IF YOUR THE PARENT OF ONE THESE KIDS, DONT GIVE EM THE PERMISSION TO SUBMIT IT TO YOUTUBE, DON`T ENCOURAGE THEM, DONT HELP THEM DOING IT AND DONT DO IT YOURSELF SERIOUSLY WHAT ARE YOU THINKING... AND IF YOUR

M: IF YOU`RE AN ADULT AND MAKING THESE VIDEOS.... FUCK YOU, I HATE YOU

allright i guess thats it, at least i´m feeling better know, sorry if i offended anybody but i´ve been dealing with this for to long


PS. no video examples because they are children after all and insulting them in such a way really wouldn´t be nice, i you havent seen some allready they are all over Youtube, you´ll find them there