You probably haven't heard of Michael Moschen, but the 69-year-old was the world's leading juggler in the 1980s and 1990s. A genius, he created some inspiring performances—the very best being The Triangle (1991).
Watch! Enjoy! Then we'll discuss Moschen's technique a little.
Physics, Rhythm, and Coordination in The Triangle
This one won him many awards for his outstanding object manipulation skills. Not only is it a stunning display of hand-eye coordination, its inherent musical quality complements the whole performance in brilliant fashion.
A core process to juggling is practice.
We've encouraged our friends to take up juggling (see our podcast the joys of juggling), but no one puts it into practice. Everyone seems too scared of it—as if it's beyond their abilities. But if you put the practice in, within a week you'd have some fundamental tricks under your belt such as the three ball cascade.
As for Moschen, well... his brilliance was in creating that idea and he'll have practiced. Long and hard. It's incredibly impressive the flow and momentum he builds up. It's not something everyone could learn. He just has an exceptional brain for it.
We covered this in our history of juggling feature from a while ago, but juggling has a mathematical quality about it. German mathematician Burkard Polster created a formula for this:
(F+D)H=(V+D)N
That basically covers the time the balls spend in the air, in a juggler's hands, how many balls are being juggled, and the number of hands in use.
In 2008, Moschen provided a TED talk on his thought processes and approach to rhythm and motion.
Although Moschen seems to keep a low profile these days, he has received credit for his work. In 1990 he won the Fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation for his ingenuity and skill.
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