talkmagic.co.uk

If you've seen my facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/closeupmagician) you'll know that I'm into optical illusions etc.

It looks like there's going to be a great episode of the TV programme Horizon on BBC2/BBCHD at 9pm on Monday entitled 'Is seeing believing?'.

I'm sure there will be plenty of relevance to magic and illusion etc. Look out for it

I've set it to record already

Cool. There's certainly a huge difference between looking and seeing.

Thanks for that, will check it out.

I saw the trailer for this, and set the recorder straight away. It clashes with the second part of the history of horror movies, but thats repeated later anyways
Cant wait.

I too saw the trailer, and it contained somebody doing the snap change.

Sincerely hope they don't explain that trick, prime time on BBC2, as i still get a lot of mileage out of it.

Looking forward to it. Horizon seems to be getting a bit better this year.

Am looking forward to this after seeing the trailer.
Reminds me of Jerry Andrus' Impossible Objects.

Robbie wrote:Looking forward to it. Horizon seems to be getting a bit better this year.

I know what you mean. It went a bit "Justin Lee Collins" in previous series.

Ooooh, shiny! There's an interesting article on the BBC news web site about optical illusions: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11553099 Try to spot the predator. I bet you can't in black and white without movement cues.

Tomo wrote:Ooooh, shiny! There's an interesting article on the BBC news web site about optical illusions: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11553099 Try to spot the predator. I bet you can't in black and white without movement cues.

What a great taster for the programme! And yes, I failed the predator test completely. (Although once you see it in colour, it's glaringly obvious in black and white.)

It's one of the Telegraph's "TV picks of the day". Apparently it's not just about optical illusions, but about the overall gap between reality and perception, including parts of reality that humans can't perceive at all but other animals can.

Robbie wrote:It's one of the Telegraph's "TV picks of the day". Apparently it's not just about optical illusions, but about the overall gap between reality and perception, including parts of reality that humans can't perceive at all but other animals can.

Indeed:

"Reality is not what we see.
It's the map, not the territory."

William Blake? Never heard of him...

Tomo wrote:Try to spot the predator. I bet you can't in black and white without movement cues.

Even with movement clues, I failed to spot the table tennis men in gorilla suits at the start of one Derren's stage shows.

there is a bit of interesting reading here, on Gustav Kuhn's web site.

Gustav is the guy on the show from Brunell uni.

http://people.brunel.ac.uk/~hsstggk/Gus ... rests.html

A whole hour, and what we learnt was that if you lose one of your senses, the other's are slightly heightened. Can't helping thinking scientific research could be put to better use than this.

Jing wrote:A whole hour, and what we learnt was that if you lose one of your senses, the other's are slightly heightened. Can't helping thinking scientific research could be put to better use than this.

Did you watch the same programme as me?

I learnt an awful lot more than that.

Great hour of telly, I reckon.