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I have stumbled today on this blog post on Scientific American, about Alex Stone and the openness vs. secrecy in magic argument. I myself can spot a few flaws in the post, but still, as a scientist who values published results and data in science, it got me thinking.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/lit ... -yourself/

What do you think about it?

I think people who hold to an absolute rule are usually wrong, there are cases where exposure does improve the effect (suck as Penn and Tellers blast off / trap door routine) or even false exposure can improve the effect (such as Derren Browns N.L.P routine), but on the other side I fail to see how exposure of O.O.T.W. or a swami can improve the effect at all, if the audience are aware of the mechanic throughout then all showmanship becomes moot anyway.

If magic is about mystifying and astounding your audience with impossible occurrences does that make Tommy Cooper a bad magician? If it's about humour and light hearted entertainment does that make David Berglas a bad magician?

MiKo wrote: I myself can spot a few flaws in the post, but still, as a scientist who values published results and data in science, it got me thinking.

Fair enough but magic is not a science, if it were we'd all be allowed to call ourselves scientists and I doubt the scientific community would approve of that, and while a free and open sharing of knowledge sounds like a nice idea and would even be a good thing in most cases, would it be okay that my name, address and porn collection be made public knowledge without my consent?

Of course exposure doesn't destroy magic, and so therefor it's not that big a deal, but we as magicians are allowed to have our secrets and we should show respect for our peers and superiors. So when someone exposes a magic trick they didn't invent that is wrong but it's not that big a deal, and like most things it depends on the circumstances.

I reckon Alex Stone must have a book coming out and be desperate to publicise it.

Oh, wait...

I could spend ages shredding all the false logic and outright assumption in the article, but haven't the energy. It's all been said before. I do, however, like the comment that ends:

"I’m not subjecting myself to that. I don’t know why anyone does."

My guess is because some people have imaginations.

It reminded me of the episode of The Big Bang Theory where Howard has a card trick that Sheldon can't work out.

Bazinga!

Having spent the last couple of days amusing fellow passengers on a plane and one of my colleagues with nothing more than 3 rubber bands I came to a realisation that there are 3 kinds of people with regard to magic tricks.

The woman on the plane was the first type, one might say the best type from an ego stroking point of view. I wasn't intending to actually perform anything on the plane but bored after 3 hours wedged in a middle seat I started to idly fiddle with a rubber band on my wrist, culminating in taking it off to practice a few moves. When I did a band through thumb effect I was given cause to take out my earphones because the woman in the window seat was flailing her arms around like a loon. Basically she'd seen the effect and was freaked out. I followed it up with a few one-band bits. Snapped and restored, linked it to a borrowed hair band, and culminated with the good old Hansion Chien Touch effect.
She said at one point that one of the things I did actually made her feel slightly ill. This is what a certain three volume book set I'm always referring to calls "a moment of strange".
Very few people seem to get this feeling when watching magic, but those who do essentially feel their brains assaulted by the sensation that they have actually seen you do something physically impossible. No amount of exposure can make it through to people like this as they will never associate the methods they know what what they saw, simply because they believe their senses implicitly.
If you meet people like this, use it as an opportunity to bolster your confidence in your own performance.

Most audiences fall more into the second category of those who know it must be sleight of hand, have no idea how it is done and although not psychologically hammered by the effect, they will be entertained by the sense of having seen something really very clever... which is the crux of what I think over-exposure ruins. Because when you perform for someone like this, the thought of how you did it can keep them entertained and guessing for hours, even days. They'll go back to see it again if it really stumps them and still leave none the wiser but further entertained.
When you tell such people how the effect is done (Which I'm sad to say I did *once* which is why I know this) thinking it may actually please them even more to know (I'm all about making people happy) what happens is a moment of let down as they realise it was simpler than they thought. In the case of the one thing I gave away (a professor's nightmare opening move valued by Davenports at £3 for a set of unequal ropes, my residual guilt for which is why I tend to overpay on the tea at the Pentacle Club to this day) my colleage went from quiet grinning bewilderment to a dismissive chuckle and "Oh, well all it seems a bit silly knowing it's that simple".

This group of people is hampered from enjoying magic by knowing, and ironically are the group most likely to seek out such knowledge because until they learn the truth, they think they want to know how it's all done. It's only afterwards that they learn that the explanation they got didn't live up to the one they expected.

The third kind of audience are the miserable b******s who regardless of whether they know the first thing about magic will insist they saw some move or that you held your hand a bit funny, purely to aquit themselves of the personal guilt from what they perceive as being 'too stupid to figure it out'.
These kinds of people will never be happy, but the more methods they know, the more things they can blurt out from the middle of the audience or suggest to others in the bar later, spoiling it for type two and using this knowledge to make type one hate themselves for being impressed and feeling differently about magic forever.
In fact this type is almost like a zombie or vampire because if they're mouthy enough they can transform the other two types into this type by belittling their enjoyment of the craft and equating mystery with ignorance in the impressionable minds of others.

Anyway, that's what I've observed over a couple of years.

The fourth type of audience is other magicians, who are frankly too baffling to classify.

-Stacy

I'm back after a lot of drinking so this might be a little less even handed but f*** it if you can't be loud mouth arrogant t*** on the internet where can you be one?

I still stand by my statement that exposures not that big a deal or always entirely bad but this has been niggling at me since i left it. What is I can't understand is the motivation for revealing the watch steal in this way. in order to learn it you would still have to put a lot of time and effort into it and the only people who put time and effort into magic tricks are magicians so why not put this in a magic mag. And revealing this doesn't demonstrate the beauty or skill of a magic trick so whats the point? Someone on this page said it was obviously done as a publicity stunt and that's exactly right so f*** him he exposed a trick not to improve the art but to hype himself.

people who expose like this, people like the masked magician and youtube magicians, the reason they do it is because they suck, and they think the impressive part of magic is how it's done. they don't realise that when layman ask how do you do it they are hoping that you will teach them something that's actually magic, they are hoping to learn a way to genuinely read minds not write info down after it's been said, they are hoping that if you concentrate really hard you can levitate or that the heat from you hand can actually make a ball of paper float, they want to be able to do what they just experienced not what you did. Thats why after it's been exposed they are always disappointed. Don't tell them how its done ffs they don't want to know

this man is completely up his own *rse driven by greed and self congratulation f*** him nobodies going to want his shitty book anyway the only people who might are magicians and they should all now join together in a collective f*** you to this mundane run of the mill wannabe magic star.

Jean Eugene Roberts wrote:Fair enough but magic is not a science, if it were we'd all be allowed to call ourselves scientists and I doubt the scientific community would approve of that

And that's exactly one of my points: "open" science, is basically open only for scientist who can understand it, so it someway automatically selects specialists, who are the people who can benefit from its openness (as well as abuse it, of course).
As for magic, it would translate as more openness among magicians, which is something I feel happens here on TM and actually improves its members.
If only for economic reasons, I think that it doesn't happen a lot that a good secret dies with its inventor

Jean Eugene Roberts wrote:would it be okay that my name, address and porn collection be made public knowledge without my consent?

Well "knowledge" does not mean "data", you are not exactly a subject of study, aren't you?

@Stacy: I heartily agree with your post. I would also add that there are different kind of exposures: sometimes exposing a principle or a technique can be without consequence: for example the exact technique with which our Mr. Stone steals a watch is of very little interest to anybody who is not someone willing to spend lots of time, it is not a real "secret", I would say; It's a bit like exposing the exact technique of operating a gimmick: the "secret" is the presence of the gimmick, not how to use it. In general what is always bad, I think, is exposing someone else's specific tricks: if I tell to J. Doe's audience exactly how he achieve something during his show, the show itself could be hurt by the presence of a number of smart-asses potentially spoiling the enjoyment of the rest of the audience.

Sometimes a bit of exposure works to our advantage! At dinner recently I did the salt trick. The lady sitting next to me said "My husband does a trick like that but he uses a 'thing' on his thumb."

Acolophon wrote:Sometimes a bit of exposure works to our advantage! At dinner recently I did the salt trick. The lady sitting next to me said "My husband does a trick like that but he uses a 'thing' on his thumb."

I love it when you hear that!

At a recent function event i performed the miracle ring for a certain Baroness of Essex and she complimented me on my sleight of hand speed to be able to undo the knot she had tied and hook the ring on the shoelace and retie the knot within seconds "must have taken years of practice!!"

one of my biggest compliments to date!

off topic i even had an invitation to meet with her privately as she wants to teach me some magic tricks, she had learned, an offer i will obviously accept!!

back on topic, i hate exposure, and i believe somebody else has already said it, when people ask how a trick is done, they do not want the method, they want to know how to actually perform a miracle of magic!!

much love

Aza

An interesting review of mr. Stone's book...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... bs=article

Miko,
Since you've "got maths" I'm sure you don't do the lottery. It is a tax on the mathematicaly deprived!:lol:

Acolophon wrote:Miko,
Since you've "got maths" I'm sure you don't do the lottery. It is a tax on the mathematicaly deprived!:lol:

I don't, but lottery is a tax on human irrationality, not on(ly), innumeracy. And mathematicians can be utterly irrational as everybody else. We far from being Vulcans...

MiKo wrote:An interesting review of mr. Stone's book...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... bs=article" target="_blank

Interesting not least because it's reviewed by a magician

Ted wrote:

MiKo wrote:An interesting review of mr. Stone's book...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... bs=article" target="_blank" target="_blank

Interesting not least because it's reviewed by a magician

Exactly.

Aza wrote:

Acolophon wrote:Sometimes a bit of exposure works to our advantage! At dinner recently I did the salt trick. The lady sitting next to me said "My husband does a trick like that but he uses a 'thing' on his thumb."

I love it when you hear that!

At a recent function event i performed the miracle ring for a certain Baroness of Essex and she complimented me on my sleight of hand speed to be able to undo the knot she had tied and hook the ring on the shoelace and retie the knot within seconds "must have taken years of practice!!"

one of my biggest compliments to date!

off topic i even had an invitation to meet with her privately as she wants to teach me some magic tricks, she had learned, an offer i will obviously accept!!

back on topic, i hate exposure, and i believe somebody else has already said it, when people ask how a trick is done, they do not want the method, they want to know how to actually perform a miracle of magic!!

much love

Aza

I guess this is where magicians differ. The first example is terrific, (in my opinion) becuase the spectator has no clue they just know how the 'husband' does it, you however 'don't' use a thumb and its quite amazing, (even though you do).

The second example is exactly the reaction that makes me cringe, and makes me re-think about what I am doing. I don't want to show off a feat of skill such as knot tying or untying. I've failed in that instance, I've not entertained with magic, I've now entertained with an 'obvious' skill. I may as well be juggling. And yes I do juggle and I love it, not a slam on jugglers at all.

You really have not 'fooled' the spectator at all, they may still not know the method, but in their heads they do, therefore the magic is gone as all magic takes place in the head of the spectator, we just have to get it there.

And a reminder, this is just my opinion. We are all different and measure sucess and failure differently and are out to achieve different things. No wrong, no right.