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Hi guys, as my interests lie soley in the mentalism section of our art, I attended Tabla Mentis last weekend.
In discussion the topic of making mentalism visual came up.

I use the old ring on chain effect (a magic trick that I have usurped and added a mentalism presentation to) which gets great reactions and draws in spectators from across the room.

Does mentalism NEED a visual aspect?
And if so, what do you do to achieve this?

Steve

I don't think it always needs a visual element but when performing to more than one person it helps to communicate your success at reading their minds, for example.
A drawing duplication, in which you show not only your drawing but also theirs, is more dramatic than having the participant publicly agree that the images more or less match.
Of course, not all effects can or need to be visual. Q&A for example.
T.

This is an interesting idea that you're raising in mentalism. I think for me, it's important not to think like a magician per se when you're talking about making something more visual in mentalism. Mentalism is inherently theatre that is in a person's mind ... so the visual aspects should somehow illustrate as best as possible what is going on in a person's head.

I think part of what makes mentalism visual is the staging or theatre of an effect. I remember in Banachek's PSI series, he discusses this idea of making mentalism more visual. But Banachek goes on to say that there is something already visual or "odd" about seeing someone standing on stage with a blindfold on their head. Seeing something that is out of the norm is already visually interesting. Although interpreting "visual" to mean a large prediction banner on stage isn't a bad idea, I think if I were trying to make my mentalism more visual, I would be thinking more in terms of staging and composition.

Does the visual language of my stage tell the story/effect I want to.

Suppose you had an effect where you needed to set the atmosphere of a seance or perhaps give the impression of a casino ... have you been able to set that mood? Do you have the appropriate prop? Derren Brown's "Mystery Box" http://youtu.be/inwAb0n4Mto effect in his Enigma show comes to mind. You can see how visually interesting the stage is set. There is a clear composition of the prop, the subject and the mentalist.

My point is, you don't need to be visual in a magician's sense if you're doing mentalism. The visuals need to make sense for the effect you're doing. In the Brown example above, visually the boxes and the ball of yarn being pulled back all give the illusion that it is impossible for this medallion to have been inside this box originally.

I tend to wear a nice suit to give it a visual element. Beyond that, no. I don't like props.

My show is highly visual and very mental

http://www.todd-landman.com/magic/lifti ... ignorance/

Scroll down to see the stage set.

My first thought on reading the OP was contact mind-reading. My second thought (reading further down) was how visual Derren Brown's Q&A was.

What we do is odd. Really odd. I think, with care, the oddness of what we do can be made visual, not just in terms of making the reveal visual, but of making the process visual too. I was taken by Jermay's "rocking" when reading people's minds at TM.

Mentalism can be visual in all sorts of ways. It can be in the props (I do not think that "proper" mentalism should have no props - just that the ones that are used should be congruent), the performer, the participants, the performance and the revelation. These things overlap to a degree.

I think that most mentalism does have some kind of visual aspect, because the performer is a prop too (in a sense).

I don't go out of my way to make things visual. I try to use things that have a meaning or impact. Sometimes, this will involve props, or big revelations. Sometimes, it is "simply" reading someone's mind.

As an example, for some reason I got quite excited by Mintalist. Then I stopped to think about what the trick involved and I couldn't shake the feeling of "so what?". The performer says how many mints you took from a box. So what? He or she tells you how many were of one colour. So what? No one is going to go home and say how amazing it was the someone knew how many mints they had, or that gee, they wish they knew how many pink sweets there were in a handful.

I think that the Mintalist product is a great trick, but if it is mentalism, it's not the sort I am going to do.