Magician Fooler?

Everyone has approached a spectator with a pack of cards and before even removing them from the box been told by the spectator "I've seen this before," after only saying, "take a card."

That situation would suggest that card magic appears to all be the same to laymen even before they know whats happening, the best way I can think of to separate your magic from what appears to be a puzzle of specific moves and pattering into what appears clean and innocent.

Self working effects with a stack are only impressive if the deck didn't appear to have been stacked in advance through use of a deck switch from a pack shuffled by a spectator, a really good spread cull, or good false shuffles you yourself use. Due to a lack of moves and clean moves these effects can appear to be truly magical and nothing like a puzzle.

I feel everyone should check out your post on visual noise and check out the paper engine to improve the believability in some of their effects.

I feel card magic being labeled as sleight of hand is a bad thing but expected. More than enough has been exposed to show what amazing things people can do with just an ordinary pack. This thought is a bad idea because ingenious gimmicks get brushed off such as the invisible deck, comments such as "He just flipped it over," or "everyone must pick that card," take away from the magic and trivialize it.

excellent point there Greg.

Your post sparked me to ask this, What is "Magical"? is it like a sense of wonder? Astonishment so to speak if you go along the Paul Harris route. But I think I get more of that sensation watching someone juggle 9 balls or doing miming. That sense of wonder of achieving some amazing feat using the human body alone is quite wonderful.

But magic is so hidden… secrets everywhere. Maybe that is one of the big reasons people treat card tricks as puzzles.

Magic (done well) is like special effects (done well) in a good movie. Not so much seen as a puzzle but as a mysterious technology beyond our 'casual' interest or comprehension. Done well, we may suspend our disbelief and relish in the mystery.

Adding meaning and drama to magic can enhance the effect but very few card tricks are 'miracles' so to speak.

Jamy Ian Swiss writes about the subtleties and finesses employed in Carlyle’s Homing Card (see Scripting Magic) to create a 'truly' impossible happening. Oil and Queens is a good trick for example but Carlyle's Homing Card is truly a fantastic mystery when thoughtfully scripted and well rehearsed.

There is a time and a place for ‘tricks’ and very few opportunities to create a small miracle, as all that really matters is the spectators own emotional investment in the illusion.

I'm learning to pick my moments very carefully to avoid looking like a performing monkey. Showing off is the fools idea of glory – to borrow a phrase from Bruce Lee.

I bought The Paper Engine partly on your recommendation, what a book! Thanks Tony.

Its a great book. Make sure you read "in between the lines" so to speak. His advice is great after each sleight of hand study.

I'm going to ignore the bigger question once, cause it's another one of those things we've talked about a lot . But the first question I think is interesting…

I've never fooled one of you guys, not once. I think the only magician I ever fooled once was Bruce and only for a second. When he tried to reconstruct, he figured it out and was pissed that I got him with the two moves we were working on at the same time. Then again, I never really try to fool you guys, cause I guess I'm going after the same feeling I get fooling a laymen, which is almost impossible. The context is different.

I've been fooled by magicians a lot. I even admitted recently, either to you or one of our friends, that throwing things like overhand shuffles or ATFUS (which I canNOT stand… just ATFUS that is) will fool me. Not in a good way but… I miss the details. I lose track of an "exact" method. I may figure it out eventually, but I don't figure out the calculations in my head. I guess it's more puzzling in that case.

So I think there's a difference between a trick being puzzling, and "uhm… what the HELL was that?"

Dobson (and plenty of others) used to say fooling magicians is a lot easier than laymen, cause we know exactly what each other is looking for. That way, you can take advantage of it. It's more psychological misdirection than spatial in most of the cases. Lots of leading us down the garden path and whatnot. And we both know he could fool the hell out of magicians time and time again.

I guess what I'm saying is there's more of a continuum. The difference between a magician doing an overly complex impossible location (if it was TOO complex, you have a lot of possibilities to hang on, regardless of being fake methods of not) to, let's say, a magician doing some new and incredible bare handed coin vanish (not as many possibilities to hang on to, and if it managed it correctly, he's killed them all).

So maybe the formula is first, how many possible methods are there given the circumstances (and this is where the Too-Perfect Theory would throw in as many as possible… GAG), and how many are eliminated, the faster the better? Keep those low and you get a real fooler.

Here's a more interesting angle… laymen sometimes clutch onto obviously wrong (to us) methods. For a few reasons. In the Harris camp, maybe just to reconstruct their "boxes" so they can sleep at night. Magicians are a little different. We don't settle. So not only does our knowledge make us more susceptible to being fooled, but to being fooled longer and maybe even harder. Maybe fooling magicians can have an equal amount of impact in the long run?

So about the second question regarding laymen.

I know a number of magicians who claim that if we admit to using sleight of hand, we defeat the purpose of calling it "magic." These magicians claim that we tell the laymen that the only explanation is magic.

I think this is both simplistic and ineffective when performing for laymen. The only 3 magicians I know who have really been successfully claiming that their work is true magic are John Edward, Sylvia Browne and Uri Geller. Do we really want to be any of them?

Moreover, I think lay audiences feel insulted if we deny sleight of hand. Most of our audiences aren't stupid, and they know the things are impossible. They know they are entertained by our presentations and our skill. If they thought we were really performing magic, I think the interaction would be quite different.

Also, if magicians feel they must deny any use of sleight of hand, I think you den yourself many very interesting plot and presentational ploys. There are some great presentations based on sleight of hand or audience perception, or even talking honestly about how people are fooled (see most of Penn and Teller's act).

Anyway, there is my 4 cents for now.

I agree with by saying "by magic" might as well be a "fuck you" but how would you respond to something that couldn't be explained via sleight of hand, like bending a signed coin.

I suppose calling it sleight of hand would make you look amazingly skilled but I think calling it sleight of hand can weaken interest by suggesting limits in a way.

I don't feel we can just say its magic but I don't feel we can just say sleight of hand either…

isn't anything less than telling them the real method a "fuck you"?

I agree but without that option do you, claim super powers, extreme dexterity, avoid the question, have a prepared answer, recite that a magician never reveals his secrets, perform logical follow up demonstration of what ever you claim to use till they don't say, "how do you do that." I don't feel a "fuck you" response cuts it unless you don't mind jerking around your spectator.

I have seen some effects that gets the "that's impossible" response rather than the "how do you do that" response. Isn't that what we should be striving for and should try to construct? Maybe the way routines are constructed should be thought about outside of the effect? What I'm trying to say that I find routines and effects where the layperson is not aware that what you are showing is even an effect until the effect happens at the very end. Better description of this is let's say you have started an intriguing conversation and using your cards to demonstrate your point but at the end it becomes an effect (pick whatever plot in card magic that may be applicable). So, maybe the question should be less about the actual effect and instead how the effect should have been presented or maybe I'm just talking out of my ass (which is quite magical in it's own right). What do you guys feel?

Agreed.
….except…. since all of our audiences already know that when we say "magic" we really mean "sleight of hand," I think we can just as easily call ourselves magicians and it means the same thing (and doesn't take as long to say

I have to agree with your last statement, I don't think we should be showcasing our magic as superpowers. Because if we really has superpowers why would we ever touch a deck of cards. So it is not a bad thing when we fool a laymen or even a magician and they are impressed or "puzzled" as to how we accomplished that.

I think the only people who really think we are doing real magic are the same people who believe we sold our soul to the devil and they just don't use common logic for anything.

Anyways, more funny videos!

I want to also add that calling ourselves magicians is, in my mind, dumb. I dont think there is anything wrong with calling ourselves slight of hand artists. Why bother trying to hide what we are doing by calling it "MAGIC" do we as "magicians" really believe that laymen then we are doing magic.

I have to think if you ask someone to define magic, they would say slight of hand in a matter of words. So why continue to fool ourselves just come out with it.

When people ask us "how did you do that" you might as well say, "fuck you" instead of "by magic". What would be so wrong with saying, "with slight of hand"?

What if you tell a magician that you are going to perform a magician fooler to him, but in fact you don't, you just use a simple principle and he has no idea how it's done because he pays attention to catch a secret move or smth….could we call that a magician fooler fooler?