The thing I really love about magic is that so much of it boils down to “I practiced for years and developed a seemingly superhuman ability to manipulate this object”.
I really relate to this because despite being at least ostensibly “gifted” my entire academic career, almost all of my professional success has been because I have been willing to climb steep learning curves at the expense of hours of my life and extreme frustration.
In short, I can relate because I too practice a type of “up close” magic which few people can even appreciate.
A good specific example of this that isn't widely known is the "muscle pass".
It amounts to holding a coin in a classic palm position (dead center of the palm), then spending several months strengthening the palm muscles and developing a callus, until you can propel the coin a foot or so without noticeably moving your hand.
> so much of it boils down to “I practiced for years and developed a seemingly superhuman ability to manipulate this object”.
Amateur magician here (but a magician member of the Magic Castle, so I know a few things). Manual dexterity is certainly a useful skill, but it's just a tiny part of the art of magic. You can be a consummate sleight-of-hand artist and still be a mediocre magician, and conversely, some of the best magicians don't use particularly difficult sleights. The best example of that I know of is Dani Da Ortiz's routine on Penn and Teller Fool Us:
Now, Dani is in fact a master at sleight-of-hand, and so one would think that you are watching a masterclass in sleights, but no. There are a few sleights, but they are not particularly difficult, beginner-level. I could do them, and I'm not particularly skilled. The trick is based almost entirely on timing and misdirection and psychological subtleties.
The degree of psychological subtlety in top-level magic continually blows my mind. The best magicians make it look like magic even when you know how the trick is done. Dani's trick is a consummate example. The performance looks like chaos, but in fact every detail is meticulously crafted and serves a purpose. It's almost like watching a dance.
" The best magicians make it look like magic even when you know how the trick is done. "
Agree with this. I remember being the 'skeptic kid' at a birthday party long ago. The magician involved me in a trick everyone could figure out but it was done with charm and I was completely delighted.
When teaching this whole routine, Dani spends much more time on the psychological background and nudges that are used, rather than the physical card manipulation techniques.
Yep. I am blown away not just by Dani's execution of this routine, but also by its design. It is a true thing of beauty, with layer upon layer of subtlety that most audience members will never appreciate because they don't know it's there. It is deliberately hidden. It has to be. Being hidden is an essential part of its function. Which is why I always try to seize the opportunity to raise awareness of this sort of thing among muggles.
BTW, if you are a Castle member, Carl Hein is currently doing a routine in the Library Bar that is IMHO in the same league Dani's Fool Us routine. We took some friends of ours to the Castle a week ago and Karl absolutely melted their brains. They're still talking about it. :-)
(And if you're not a Castle member but are in the LA area, contact me privately and I can set you up with a guest pass.)
That reminds me of a few episodes of Fool Us where they gave the prize to the guest because they knew exactly how the trick was done, but were literally unable to physically detect the person doing it because their skills were just that good.
A learning curve is a model for how much you can learn over time. A subject with a steep learning curve is actually one that doesn’t take much time to reach a high level. It’s the subjects with shallow slopes that take more work to raise up to proficiency.
It's a bit of a fossilized error. Like "this begs the question of...", "head over heels", "sleeping like a baby", and "Have your cake and eat it too" everyone should understand what it means, even if it doesn't stand up to technical analysis.
True, that meaning seems to be typical now. The opposite is the original meaning though.
> Scores of authors use the phrase “steep learning curve” or “sharp learning curve” in reference to a skill that is difficult to master. . . . Nevertheless, from the standpoint of learning theory, these and other authors have it backward, because a steep learning curve, i.e., a curve with a large positive slope, is associated with a skill that is acquired easily and rapidly (Hopper et al., 2007).
Everyone is talking about curves, but no one's talking about how the axes are labeled.
Based on common usage of the term learning curve, I had thought of it much like a power curve where the y-axis is the amount of cumulative effort you have to put in to reach a particular point on the x-axis, which measures mastery. Sounds like the official definition is effort on the x-axis and the total amount you've learned on the y-axis, which would indeed invert the meaning from how I've understood it.
Feels like the perfect thread to re-link to my favorite card-trick movie - Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants. Not only is he a deft card manipulator, but he is a great story teller with a vast knowledge of magic history.
Ricky Jay was legendary, on the level of Houdini, and a gift to Hollywood as an adviser and occasional (but good) character actor. As good as he was at cards, he admitted others were better - but none beat him at throwing cards into targets. The man could probably have assassinated with a poison-laced deck, no lie.
He took on a young "partner" (mentored a student, but without admitting it), and presumably taught him much in his last years. Hopefully nearly all.
Jason is phenomenal. There is absolutely no telling how many hours he has had a deck of cards in his hands.
The foundations of card magic are certainly out there, and for me knowing how the fundamental slights work make it that much more magical to see it performed at such a level. No different than having played a sport makes spectating that much more interesting and appreciable.
fwiw, learning curve theory relates how much learning you get through time or episodes of experience. a lot of learning from a small amount of experience (easy to learn) means you will slide quickly down that steep learning curve. a shallow learning curve implies that it takes a great deal of experience to learn.
Even if you never want to practice magic, I highly recommend buying a few Dani DaOrtiz lectures. The way his mind works is phenomenal, and the things he talks about (psychology, how people think, crafting experiences) are applicable across the board.
(I rarely perform his tricks... they're brilliant, but they're so perfectly suited for his style that I can't even come close to pulling them off without seeming like a confused idiot. But I love watching him explain what goes into each trick. This specific trick is available on Vanishing.)
He has a youtube channel where he performs most of the tricks in his courses (just not how to do them). After you watch for a while, you realize that he can get great effects out of moves that don't even take significant sleight of hand: He might be doing the most blatant manipulation in the middle of some comedy bits that make it invisible to anyone engrossed in the performance.
Now, that specific Fool Us performance has moves most magicians cannot pull off, but still, a large percentage of the act involves his standard slew of tricks to put a lot of randomness where it doesn't matter, while there is no randomness near the cards that matter.
I was only half way paying attention because I was enjoying the joy of everyone around him.
I wonder if it will hold up the next time I watch. I keep notes for my daughters to read some day and wrote about this tonight (it’s been too long since I wrote them), I hope this video will still be around when they are ready to read the notes so they can experience it too.
Back when national TV mostly showed national magicians, and sparingly, my family loved "Fool Us" because it brought such a variety of different magicians from all around the world into our living room.
My favourite magician I've discovered since being online is Lennert Green https://www.ted.com/talks/lennart_green_close_up_card_magic_...
Great to hear. I'll never forget running into Teller in the lobby of a small show I went to that he was also in the audience for. I sheepishly asked for an autograph and he was very friendly and gracious (and spoke!).
So? It's still similar to meeting the actor playing a favorite character in a movie or series. Some people prefer to never stop suspending their disbelief and that's also fine.
When Teller chooses to be in character is a choice for him to make, not his fans. I'm merely describing reality, not expressing a preference. Don't shoot the messenger.
Nobody is "shooting" any "messengers", I'm just raising an eyebrow at messengers who state the obvious with a tone as if I'm a child who still believes in Santa Claus. I genuinely do not see how you managed to conclude that I needed to be explained that the muteness is an act.
Do you understand the difference between rationally knowing something is an act and the experience of actually seeing an actor out of an acting context?
Gives me Rush vibes when Rolling Stone finally put them on the cover 41 years, 19 albums, and millions of sales and sold out tours later. Not to mention the R&R HOF…
These guys are something else. I remember seeing them on Scooby Doo when I was a kid growing up. Their Vegas show is great. I’ve seen several magic shows and specials on TV, but the way they ran the whole thing and let you inspect the stage was super cool.
Penn and Teller: Fool Us is amazing. I went on a binge a year or so ago, watching everything there was to watch on YouTube (which is a lot).
I love how genuinely enthusiastic and encouraging of lesser known magicians they are. Always willing to celebrate their strengths instead of mocking them for their failures.
And they are excellent magicians, too.
My respect for Penn also went up after he realized his hardcore libertarian position was untenable. It was nice seeing him grow out of it.
I did the same a few years ago and it was one of the few series that kept me hooked, trying to figure out how the contestants try to fool Penn and Teller. I'll need to revisit for some newer episodes that I may have missed..
A bit off topic but no one else brought up Penn's great acting as Hal the system admin in Hackers (1995), a classic movie that everyone should be familiar with (and if not, worth checking out!).
My favorite episode had a magician do a great act about reading the paper, and all these terrible things spilled out and then he closed it, reopened it and good things spilled out. Penn and Teller of course recognized a zombie and a twilight seance but went out of their way to say how moving and entertaining they found the act.
Like a ‘bucking bronco,’ a horse kicking high and trying to throw off its rider - you ‘buck’ something to get it off of you, to get it off your back, to shake it off, to get out from under it. You might also see it in ‘bucking a trend.’
So it means “to act against” / “to escape from” the rules.
It would be remiss not to mention James Randi as well, who while being a magician also had a career exposing genuine fraudsters (who wanted you to take them seriously, unlike Randi's magic)
Does anyone have a good recommendation for a video to watch of their magic? Preferably something that’s a longer form, like something on Netflix or prime video
And what's remarkable to me is how nice they are to the other magicians, how willing to help and celebrate them, never heckle them. These are genuinely cool guys.
yes, fool us is remarkably different. but then, the whole show is designed to showcase and celebrate others. that older show wasn't. it's like they have grown up.
They never caught my attention either. Clearly very talented, but not my cup of tea. Maybe it could be an acquired taste, but I'll leave that FOMO on the floor.
The Magic Circle absolutely does not like revealing the trick. Penn and Teller are all about revealing the trick. They see it more or less as their moral duty to make sure you know THERE IS NO MAGIC HERE.
I've always respected them a great amount for that. I'm glad that The Magic Circle finally came around.
It's one thing to reveal standards like the cups and ball, but another entirely different to spoil a recent trick a living magician is still making money off. I don't think they do the latter.
The balls and cups with transparent cups is still amazing, by the way.
They don't seem to do this anymore. Or, at least, not without paying some money. I think they have a "Hang with Penn and Teller"-like thing that you can buy VIP tickets for.
The other thing to note is that Penn and Teller are getting old. Penn is 70 and Teller is almost 80! Don't expect anything in their act which requires physicality anymore.
Maybe Vegas is different, but I saw them just a couple of weeks ago. They were doing a 50th anniversary performance at the place they did their first show together, the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. They hung around in the crowd for at least 20 minutes after the show, talking and letting people get selfies.
He has a speaking role in an old 1987 baseball movie, "Long Gone", with William Petersen and Virginia Madsen, as the son in a father/son partnership who own a minor league team (Henry Gibson was the dad). Very disorienting to hear him talk when I first saw the movie way back when.
I am not sure why they even bother...they are at the top of their fields and they are household names in America that are synonymous with magic. Not since Houdini has there been such famous magicians in show biz. The professional organizations should be naming prizes after them instead of them begging to be part of the in-group. You don't see Bill Gates, Jobs, or Torvalds begging to join the IEEE.
Keeping them out might have been due to some oldtimer in the organization that couldn't let go of the "never reveal secrets" gospel, whilst newer members at the top recognize that with todays social medias the cat's truly out of the bag and alienating the biggest household names is just counter-productive.
I think they've also seen that American Wrestling seems to be doing fine even if the entire fakeness is out in the open.
I think the difference here is that Penn and Teller are just as much historians of magic as they are magicians themselves. Accepting the honor is also accepting that the history is still relevant and worth celebrating. Making this into an ego thing misses the point a bit, I think.
