talkmagic.co.uk

DrTodd wrote:

Lady of Mystery wrote:I think mentalism and bizarre have to be presented as if they're real. With those, most of the effect happens in inside the audiences heads and works by playing on the fact that what they're seeing jst might well be real. Without that believability, most mentalism would just look like (not very good) magicians tricks and a lot of bizarre just wouldn't work.

Bless you for mentioning bizarre, which was strangely absent from Bananafish's list. There are some great ways to invoke the scholar rmagicians of the Renaissance and couch performances in ways that make reference to real magic...I think folks like Paul Voodini and others are doing the kind of material that gets as close to real magic as anything I have seen...

Todd I think you'll find that it was me who mentioned bizarre in the post before Lady of Mystery's as I noticed it hadn't been mentioned in the initial post

There are certianly many paths to presenting the craft of illusion. Both 'magical' and 'non-magical' approaches each have their strengths and weaknesses, and each will suit a different kind of performing persona. Having said that, I must admit I'm with Mr Weasel, in that I feel that presenting what we do as 'magic' can lessen audience buy-in among the skeptics. But, as Bananafish points out, there are many different 'arms' of the craft, and each is more suited to one type of presentational approach than another.

What all have in common is one thing: they all seek to present illusions of impossibility, that is to say, sequences of events that lie outside the normal chain of physical causality. What each performer has to decide is what is the reason for these violations of causality, what is the source? For some, the source lies in the presentational approach of being invested with occult/ esoteric knowledge or power, simulating the shaman of old, for others it resides squarely in the realm of empirical: mechanical manipulation and psychological techniques.

I do have to disagree with Part-Timer when he says that Gambling Routines are not (or cannot) be 'magical' (where I take 'magical' to mean 'lies outside the normal chain of causality'). For a start, a gambling routine does not necessarily involve simulating just a card game, it can take the from of just about any kind of proposition bet one cares to mention. Even if the presentation does revolve round a card game, the effect can move from 'not knowing how it's done' to 'knowing it can't be done' with good design. Indeed, many effects are based on this premise of moving from what could be explained by technical skill to the outright impossible (e.g. 'The Vegas Shuffle' - Darwin Ortiz).

Where I do agree with Part-Timer is when he says that "A lot of what I call General Magic is pretty useless". One problem that I think a large amount of modern magic suffers from is the fact that the presentations of the effects (and sometimes the effects themselves) speak to nothing but themselves, they are entirely self-referential. As Jay Leno said to one performer who he saw produce a multitude of spongeballs: ”..and the practical application of this is..?”.

Jing wrote:The idea of magic, and I think a lot of beginners miss this is, is that you have to aim to make people question their reality.
People know it's not real magic, they know it, they know it, they know it BUT you just showed them something completely impossible! Now they have to rethink, hold a second, back up, do that last bit again.

. This shows the difference betweeen being convinced emotionally, and being convinced intellectually. Intellectually, people know that cards and things don't just invisibly whizz arond the place, but when presented with the 'evidence' they can come to beleive it emotionally, without reference to any kind of occult power.

DrTodd wrote:Bless you for mentioning bizarre, which was strangely absent from Bananafish's list.

Not so strange really - my list was never intended to be a complete list of all Genre's of magic (although I must admit that if I had thought about it I would have added it). No, my intenton was to provoke a discussion about whether or not magic (all genres) should be performed as if we are doing "it" for real, where "it" is whatever method we are claiming to use.

I do agree with most of what seems to have been said here and in fact it has spurned me on to re-read Osterlind's booklets on "Making Magic Real" and "Making real Magic".

Randy wrote:I don't think that performing it as actual magic is condensing at all. Sure you can't convince EVERYBODY that it was magic, but you can perform it in a way where it looks like you didn't do anything at all or where you end up giving people an answer and then crossing it out. Guys like Whit Haydn, Juan Tamariz and tons of other top performers use that type of style.

Gambling has always been a demonstration of skill, of cheats and cons. I think if you are setting yourself up to do a gambling routine then it should be just that. But I ask you, what is the difference between dealing four aces to yourself or to the guy sitting at your left then to making them appear one at a time on the top of the deck, or switching from Kings to Aces, or having them reverse in the deck. It is all in presentation. Are you demonstrating a cheating skill at the poker table. Or are you a magician performing miracles?

I think one can be condescending saying hockey magic words or incantations. But I can also feel one can be condescending in a gambling routine. It comes down to the performer. A good performer using crazy hand gestures and magic words can get an audience laughing and having a good time and present miracles just as easily, if not easier than you gambler or mentalists. I think that the audience understanding that it is not 'real' magic works to the magicians advantage because it gives one the freedom to have fun and joke around. The real challange falls into the hands of the bizzarest. The guys who want to create a new religion, who want to take your perceptions and dump them on your ear. And believe it or not, there is a place for us too. Again it all comes down to performance.

The truth of the matter is that people want to believe. All you have to do is be good enough to give them something to believe in.

B

SpareJoker wrote:I do have to disagree with Part-Timer when he says that Gambling Routines are not (or cannot) be 'magical' (where I take 'magical' to mean 'lies outside the normal chain of causality').

I used it in the sense weasel did (as it was his views that led bananafish to start this thread).

I once came up with what you would view as a gambling routine (indeed, so did I) based around someone having ridiculous amounts of luck and/or intuition and being able to win games of chance that way. My inspiration was a Roald Dahl story.

You have crossed over into an issue about on presentation and/or premise. You could present a lot of gambling tricks as magic (I have made the cards become the ones I want), mentalism (I know which cards come next), skill or just plain lucky (which is not necessarily magical either). You have at least four different presentations from one "genre" of trick and perhaps in some cases all four could be served by one method.

However, I was talking about gambling demonstrations portrayed as demonstrations of skill, because that made my point clearest. I could perhaps have been slightly clearer when I talked about gambling routines that were "portrayed as such", but I was following directly on from the original post, in which bananafish made his points based on gambling routines shown as demonstrations of skill and also the quote from weasel. In those circumstances, I think the qualifying words I used had an obvious meaning. Apparently not!

People want magic and wonder and to believe for those few moments that the impossible is possible.
Some know-it-all giving poker demonstrations appeals to some audience members but they are more of a minority than those who want to experience something magical. These demonstrations appeal more to the performer who likes to feel pleased with themselves.

I think it's simple, people go to magic shows to be decieved and entertainment. If they didn't they wouldn't be there.
I can't believe anyone could find performing 'magical feats' condescending, unless you talk down at them instead of to them.
People who know me know I don't have special powers. However the more I suggest I do, with hand waves and the odd click here and there, they react stronger and stronger everytime. I'm only a newbie so please put me in my place if needs be, but I thnk people can really ham it up when performing, there's no need. I think if magic is supposed to be an invisible force, surely it doesn't need to summoned by anymore than a gentle hand movement.

At the risk of repeating and old saying (by Peter Marucci) again, people who think magic is in the props should try taking a piano apart and look for the music. Props are useful but magic is in the presentation and the minds of the spectators.

People know that Yoda isn't real but he's still much loved!

Lord Freddie wrote:People know Yoda real is not, but still much loved is he!

Fixed.

Mandrake wrote:At the risk of repeating and old saying (by Peter Marucci) again, people who think magic is in the props should try taking a piano apart and look for the music. Props are useful but magic is in the presentation and the minds of the spectators.

Spot on

Whilst my presentation of magic generally revolves around a comedic faux-sciency routine, and as such I might not be in the right thread, I just wanted to say how surprised I am that no one has attempted to refute the original statement that there are 4 types of magic:
Gambling Routines, Mentalism, Card Magic and Childrens Magic.

And since a lot of Mentalism uses cards (of some variety, also billets) the 4 types of magic are card magic, card magic, card magic, and children's magic.

Am I reading that right? That sponge balls, cups, ropes, sawing people in half, death defying illusions, billiard ball routines, tear and restore (with anything other than cards), coins, doves, silks, linking rings, and many others all fall into the same category and that category is "Children's magic", where as Card magic has two and a half categories to itself? Was that actually what Bananafish was saying?

-Stacy

The4thCircle wrote:Am I reading that right? That sponge balls, cups, ropes, sawing people in half, death defying illusions, billiard ball routines, tear and restore (with anything other than cards), coins, doves, silks, linking rings, and many others all fall into the same category and that category is "Children's magic", where as Card magic has two and a half categories to itself? Was that actually what Bananafish was saying?

In short. No.

I said

there are different genres of magic and I believe that the approach to how we perform each one differs. Let us take some examples.

I just gave some examples - I never intended to include all genres of magic. I just was trying to make the point that we always should be "performing" whatever genre we choose as if it is really doing what we claim we are doing and more to the point I didnt think it condescending to do so.

There are far more than just 4 genres of magic and many genres cross over.

See I knew I'd read it wrong.

Must be all these late nights.

-Stacy

Thanks for making a thread about my intro, glad I didn't say anything too silly.

Palmo wrote:I think it's simple, people go to magic shows to be decieved and entertainment. If they didn't they wouldn't be there.
I can't believe anyone could find performing 'magical feats' condescending, unless you talk down at them instead of to them.
People who know me know I don't have special powers. However the more I suggest I do, with hand waves and the odd click here and there, they react stronger and stronger everytime. I'm only a newbie so please put me in my place if needs be, but I thnk people can really ham it up when performing, there's no need. I think if magic is supposed to be an invisible force, surely it doesn't need to summoned by anymore than a gentle hand movement.

I am not intentionally singling you out Palmo, but there are too many replies to quote them all. But your post is the best example of what I didn't want people to think I was saying. Although I am very new so I haven't really had time for things to evolve on their own (so in 6 months I might be saying the opposite), I can give a few examples of what I would like to put my own twist on. So the most obvious example would be Derren Brown's slight twist on 'rub-a-dub vanish', where he pretends to palm a card before revealing it has actually disappeared. The reason this is a good example is that when he pretends to palm, the spectators have a very polite (but disappointed) expression as they clearly 'know' it was palmed, which is how I feel when a magician says a magic word. But the reveal doesn't imply magic, it just adds a bit of humour and THAT is the magic, they have no idea how it happened but would know it was a sleight and don't care because they were entertained. It is very difficult for me to explain what I am thinking, because 90% is due to the performer. Because card cheating routines can just look like showing off and a bit annoying, but done in the right way are very amusing.
So to try and explain what I want to develop, it would be a gambling routine but not just one that revolves around raw skill (which I am sorely lacking so far). But the theme of controlling the aces for example using many techniques would help things flow. Using poker as a theme, you could point out the importance of lie detecting and I would work this in to an almost mentalism type affair by telling them to card they thought of after reading through some of the deck.

I hope this makes sense, I don't think people imply it is 'real' magic, but the use of things like 'and a quick rub and the card disappears' is what I find condescending, because everyone knows it won't disappear but the magic is created in the presentation. The entertainment and magical experience is in being fooled, being part of the magic too and both enjoying what is happening and not sound arrogant about it.

(card under the box is a card example too, great trick but obviously the magician sneaks it there, the fun is not knowing how)