talkmagic.co.uk

I was chatting to a Legend in Magic , Roy Walton, the other day and he was saying that he believed that magic as we know it will be dead in 2 years, with the growing rise in internet magic shops and the easily available illegal download of vast numbers of magic books and DVDs Plus the growing interest in knowing how magic is done ( I'm damn sure it isn't an interest in magic as most kids that i have talked to have no interest in the performance side of things they just want to know the trick) He reackons that magic will be so common place and so widespread that the interest will plummet and there will be very few areas of magic that aren't well known and widely available to the joe blogs on the street. I would be interested to know what fellow magicians feel about this and wither they agree with it.

He also mentioned about certain magic shops taking well known tricks renaming them and then passing them off as there own. but that is a different thread

This is a point i have made several times, but the Tm REGULARS know my feelings so i will say no more

That is a shame that magic as we know it wont exist. Looks like the digital age may well be responsible for more and more destruction of arts and artforms.

I personally am a firm believer that this so-called "progress" is just bad things happening faster.

So if it gets to the stage where everyone knows how a trick is done, will you lot be stopping performing? Strangely enough I had someone say at a party that they learnt a magic trick off youtube or something, so they showed it, with no skill, no practice, no misdirection, just as it came. It was a flop.

I picked up a deck of cards and went on to wow them all by utilising the devices of magicians such as direction, misdirection, timing, patter, practice etc.

If people know how it's done, kudos to them eh. Well done for being a common criminal and for ruining an artform. Wont stop me playing with magic or showing it to the select few who still want to enjoy it as a performance.

Digital age destroying more and more of entertainment? Maybe when the entertainment industry doesn't exist anymore these people will come crawling back to us. No films because they lose too much on piracy, no books because they're being plagerised, and no magic, because people are too interested in "being in" on it without bothering to learn anything.

Where will they get their entertainment then?
Maybe some of us will keep it up, just for the fun of it, and one day be able to provide the entertainment that they destroyed.

Well I'm not sure if it will be dead in 2 years. I hope not. I think however, that the biggest contributor to this problem is youtube. It is out there where anyone can see it, people dont really have to look for it that much. Also a friend told me he found out how the ID works on Wikipedia, which I was shocked at. I don't think it is the internet itself to blame. The idea that all these kids are jsut going out finding secrets in not really true. I haven't yet had somebody say that they searched on the internet and "found it out". I don't even know any other magicians. People on the whole download movies and music, they are not that bothered about magic that they have to go and find it out....

...are they?

there is a major case of exposure on Youtube. One effect is being removed as far as i know. I don't want to mention names but let us just say a 'name' is taking action about something on youtube. But there are many more incidents on that site. Getting really silly now.

The art of magic will always survive. If it has survived all the decades of truly horrendous magicians out there it will survive the internet.

stephenmagic wrote:there is a major case of exposure on Youtube.

I agree with stephenmagic, Youtube is a dangerous threat to magic. The other day I thought I was going to watch somebody perform a magic, but instead it was a dude from USA, that made a vid only to expose a certein card trick. Another vid on Youtube was a teaching vid from PenguinMagic, showing Oz Perlman teaching a trick. This is just sad

i think its peaks and troughs, it definately will survive though..i'll bet you all a tenner...

performing, intrigue, fun, astonishment, mind-warping entertainment will always get a crowd...fair enough the "kids" might think they know how its done, but they wouldnt be able to do it themselves, cos they wont study..or heaven forbid go near a book...

and the majority of audiences are not necessarily youtubers (i wouldnt of thought anyway), and also (draws breath) most people who enjoy watching magic don't actually want to know how its done (i know some say it, but thats usually in a knee-jerk disbelief type reaction)..

online shops are a double edged sword - how many of us can truly say we don't use 'em, and more importantly - how many of us would not be into magic today if it wasnt for them in the first place? Or at least, a certain skill level...

i wouldnt of been able to get hold of books and erikson stuff and whatever else if it wasnt for the internet, or rather it would of been a hell of a lot harder...and more expensive...

i think the major reason magic will survive is that kids that just want to know how things are done usually have quite low attention spans, so once the next new shiny thing comes on the telly they will lose interest anyways...

thats a really good point abraxus i agree i think as soon as the new in thing comes around the idea of becoming the next david blaine will disappear from a lot of young kids heads. i jut hope that magic can survive the massive exposure it's getting via sites such as youtube. i would hate the artform that i love so much to become nothing more than a memory and that new and more fantastic tricks will be invented to shock and entertain a new generation of eager audiences

I think the problem doesn't come from internet.
I think it comes from TV.
Every week you see a new magician on TV (good for them), but what it creates is too much exposure. The "underground" factor vanishes, and it becomes a public think. People see things, want to know more about it. Internet is a great way to access information, so that's why it is happening.

But when I see Dynamo, and this other show (with one of them playing a chav), that is making me angry. I have absolutely nothing against these people (Dynamo and all), but they are hardly new... Their image might be fresh, but their material has been seen, and it is not that exciting.
People after seing all these different magicians doing the same things probably get to think "why don't I know how to do that" and are pushed to find out.

Then Dynamo I think will create a whole generation of kids that will want to do the same, as it is cool.

I mean, compare it to music.
Listen to what was played on the radio in the mid 80s: The Police, Supertramp, etc etc.
Music evolved, and became public domain: now you get these X factor, Pop Idol... Just look at the auditions, all these people thinking they have THE voice, when they can't physically sing. TV created a whole generation of "pop idol" wannabe... people want to get on TV (me included), and get famous and recognise.
Magic is like that at the moment. And expect it to get even worse. More and more we'll have people telling us "oh, I saw how to do that on the net"... It'll get tougher for us...

I am angered by that.
Paul Daniels killed magic in the 80s. People got sick of him. Now, he starts again appearing on TV, because this whole wave of magic is fashionable.
Maybe in 2 years we'll get David Copperfield selling us "Sillit Bang"...

Anyway.

That's what I think. I may be wrong...

My approach to this issue is to take well known tricks and find new ways todo them that disprove the well known method. I also do the same with almost every trick I know, and even invent myself. I always love when someone points out how one of my tricks is done because then it becomes a test condition, one I am usually able to overcome.

But I still believe if you are good at the art, with enough skill you can make a DL invisible to even magicians.

I was at a party once, and started to go into the ambitious card. This french guy started trying to bust my balls. He had seen a version of it before and based on his guesses as to where the card really was and where it was going to end up I got a vague understanding of how he knew the trick to play out. So, much to his surprize the card was always in the opposite place he thought it was and he very soon became quite a lovely spectator.

I think the exposure on youtube and wikipedia is wrong and should be stopped but there shouldn't stop being online magic shops and books and dvds for people who have a genuine interest in magic and are willing to pay to learn how a trick is done.
I don't think magic will be dead in two years because as said before the people who learn tricks for free off youtube aren't patient enough to practise them so they won't be able to be as good at them as the hobbyists or professional magician.
I think if you want to stop all this exposure you should contact the creators of the effects being exposed and get them to threaten legal action or pull a "jay and silent Bob" and track everyone of them down and lay the smackdown on their asses

Be realistic, how many people really go on the net looking for magic? It's only a very small minority, and if you find someone who knows how and effect is done, I'll bet you anything you'll find 1000 more that don't have a clue. And so what if the spotty little 13 year old computer oik knows how to do it, show him something he doesn't know.

The thing is, people expose the magic they have access to and let's face it, the gimmick jockeys have access to the cheap and easy stuff that practically works itself. Rather than lament the passing of something, I think we have to evolve and create stronger magic with rich and complex methods that simply can't be performed straight out of the packet or at least without, for want of a better word, training.

Let's face it, a lot of magic has become very easy to get and to do. How many reviews rate the dificulty level of effects at 1? I think it's a lot. Now, if we cross reference the difficulty level with the number of exposures, I'm willing to bet that they're inversely proportional.

I'm not worried in the least about it to be honest, they wont have any dash or vigour about them to perform it well...

I'm doing fairly regular performances now at weekends mainly, never once have i had anyone scream at "i know how thats done you idiot...get out...", well not yet...

i've had people scream, but that was intentional on my part thankfully - or it could just be my face...

yeah, lets not worry about it too much, let them have their gimmicky shiny things and i'll have my lovely books and occasional dvd...

thats not to say there's anything wrong with shiny gimmicky things naturally...