Last week we talked a bit about the history of the different props that have become a part of the Flow Arts world. Today, we’re going to talk about how the Flow Arts emerged from a wide range of diverse sources, including festival culture, philosophy, and the emergence of the internet.

Last week we started our discussion of the culture of the Flow Arts by defining the term and placing it in the context of the wider movement arts world. Today, we’re going to be talking about the history of the artform and how it came to be.

For the past 8 years I’ve been a poi spinner and Flow Artist and the experience has absolutely changed my life. I created my YouTube channel to share my love of this art with the world and hopefully introduce new people to it. So, with your indulgence, I’m going to take the next several weeks to talk about this wonderful artform and its place in our modern world.

First, let’s start out by defining the Flow Arts:

Ghost trails are a great tool for visualizing many of the tricks we play with as flow artists, regardless of the prop. Over the past few years, I've become acquainted with 5 different approaches for creating these trails using video post-production and I'm starting a video series exploring all these options. The first one is the Luminancer app for iOS--a useful app for creating LED or fire trails but one that comes with some pretty severe limitations. See my full video on the topic below:

Update 5/30/2022: So my thinking on this has changed dramatically in the past couple years and I now realize many of the conclusions I arrived at in this article were a result of sampling bias. For my current thoughts on this issue, check out this video.

This morning, I’ve seen a whole lot of my friends linking to this article about the amount of money that YouTube stars make. The general consensus has been that many of them are in the wrong line of work and that riches and stardom are simply a clever YouTube channel away.