talkmagic.co.uk

Hello,

I am a theatre grad student who has studied magic for 18 years, and one of my teachers has come to me with a technical issue he hopes I can solve. He wants an "illusion" in one of his shows that he saw performed 30 yrs ago at an amusement park and this is what he remembers:

"The illusion consisted of a room with a walkway/audience space that was slightly tilted and a performer who was behind a table that appeared to slope down towards the audience. Objects were rolled towards the audience and then they appeared to roll back up the sloping table to the performer's hand."

My first assumption was that i was done with false perspective using the slant of the room and the slant of the table to make it look "magical", and other thoughts were maybe a magnets or strings (but I think it is something easier).

Please help if you know of this illusion or if you have any ideas.

Thank you

David Mims
drm9b@virginia.edu

An interesting one, this...

I remember as a child visiting Pleasurewood Hills Theme Park between Gt Yarmouth and Lowestoft and walking through a castle fo some kind. Within that castle, there was a topsy-turvy room where everything was on a slant and it was most confusing! It was all done through using familiar looking objects, but putting them at completely the wrong angle to fool the eye and body. Weird.

I imagine the illusion your teacher saw 30 years ago would work on the same principle of perspective altering - fooling the eye and thus fooling the brain.

I imagine that both the entertainer's floor and the floor beneath the spectators are sloped, at different angles, and that the table is built with false perspective in such a way that it fools the spectators into believing it's sloped one way, when, in fact, the opposite is true.

This is so difficult to explain without pictures!

Check out these sidewalk drawings, and you might see what I'm trying to get at with regards to perspective - the drawings can only be viewed from one point otherwise they won't work. I imagine that this is the same for the illusion your teacher saw which is why there is a spectator 'walkway.'

I hope that helps and is not too confusing!

Check here http://www.phantasialand.de/content.php?siteid=5609 and then click on Galerie for photo's.

I think this is similar to what you're looking for if not the same.

Everything that looks normal is actually on a tilt and everything that looks tilted is actually normal - see the pool balls on the table in the back ground.

I've been here a few times and I have to say that the illusion really does want to make you puke after a few minutes. Not many people stay through the whole show

http://www.phantasialand.de/content.php?siteid=3538

this is a better link - it's in English