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Comment by pud | Hacker News Reader

Great article but it makes no mention of Michael Moschen, who many (including me) consider the best & most creative juggler in the world.

Here are some mind-blowing physics that I think the HN community, in particular, would enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjHoedoSUXY

He's also well-known for "contact juggling," where the balls don't leave the hands:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OTb8tga-yg

View on HN

When I look at Moschen (and my personal favorite, Greg Kennedy), I'm reminded of the history of visual art (painting in particular). There was a time when being a great painter meant being able to capture a scene or a moment with verisimilitude or with emotion, and a painter could make a healthy living (possibly not opulent or luxurious, but not necessarily starve-in-the-gutter poor) by capturing portraits for clients who could afford that kind of opulence. It took a particular refined set of skills to translate the world of sensory data coming in through the eye to paint on canvas.

The invention of photography basically gutted that kind of painting. People wonder why painting went to modernism and post-modernism; part of the story is that the entire skillset of "faithfully rendering the real" had been rendered economically obsolete by cameras, so an artist who didn't want to starve had to render something else. Similarly, it matters little how much discipline, effort, and grit it takes to perfect an on-stage juggling routine if the audience doesn't bother to come to the stage.

Moschen and Kennedy's style brings people something they know they've never seen before, even though they don't know juggling. It's postmodern juggling. ;)

BTW, if you remember the crystal ball contact juggling that David Bowie does in Labyrinth, that was Moschen.

An amazing video about his performance in Labyrinth, which he did WITHOUT LOOKING:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U8fTAHxjdo

I saw him perform a few years ago. It was off-putting: he spent a bunch of time during the show complaining about other people "stealing" his tricks, specifically contact juggling itself.

Ah - I do love a good contact juggling routine. I got to see this guy at the buskers festival in Christchurch NZ. They gave permission to reproduce one of their promo videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB_I2YILI2o