Magic (illusion) Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
- Magician redirects here. For the book by Raymond E. Feist, see Magician (novel).
with a deck of playing cards.]]Magic or conjuring is the art of entertaining an audience by performing illusions that baffle and amaze, giving the impression that something impossible has been achieved, almost as if the performer had supernatural powers. The practitioners of this are called Magicians, Conjurors or Illusionists.
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2 Exposure of magic techniques 3 Categories of magic 4 Techniques 5 Misuse of Magic 6 See also 7 External links |
Performances based on sleight of hand and simple deceptions have long been practised, often motivated by fraudulent ends, but the respectable profession of the illusionist gained strength during the industrial revolution, and has enjoyed several popular vogues. Magicians have become some of the most famous celebrities in popular entertainment. Magic has progressed from street hustles such as the three card trick ("find the lady") and the shell game, through the mechanical ingenuity of Robert-Houdin, the showbusiness savvy of Harry Houdini, the coming of film and television media, up to the present day, and magicians are still packing theatres and dazzling TV audiences with ever more inventive deceptions.
Along with the development of hardware, showmanship and deceptive technique, and the transfer of magic from the personal performance to modern media, has come a development in the relationship between the performer and the audience.
In most performances today, there is an unspoken agreement between the performer and the audience about what is going on. Unlike in the past, almost no performers today actually claim to possess supernatural powers (although there are exceptions in the grey area between illusionists and fraudsters); it is understood by everyone that the effects in the performance are accomplished through sleight of hand (also called legerdemain), misdirection, deception, collusion with a member of the audience, apparatus with secret mechanisms, and other trickery (hence the illusions are commonly referred to as "tricks"). The performer seeks to present an effect so clever and skilful that the audience cannot believe their eyes, and cannot think of the explanation. The sense of bafflement is part of the entertainment. In turn, the audience play a role in which they agree to be entertained by something they know to be a deception. This is one of the few situations in which people willingly allow themselves to be deceived, and the audience trusts the performer not to exploit this, for example by cheating them out of money. A comparable pact exists between the film maker and the movie audience. Film makers exploit the "willing suspension of disbelief", particularly in futuristic and fantasy movies, and the audience in turn agree to be decieved, within limits.
Magic has come and gone in fashion, but is currently (2004) enjoying a vogue driven by a number of highly successful performers such as David Blaine, David Copperfield, Penn and Teller, Derren Brown and others. Many performers, having mastered the classic techniques of conjuring, use great ingenuity to devise new kinds of performance and to reach new audience groups. Although conjuring is an old art form, it appears to have a long way to go yet.
Many of the basic principles of magic are comparatively old. There is an expression, "it's all done with smoke and mirrors", used to explain something baffling, and often this is literally true of magic performances - even today, a lot of effects are achieved using mirrors. Modern performers have vanished objects as big as the Taj Mahal, Statue of Liberty, and the Space Shuttle, using such simple optical deceptions based on the same principle as Pepper's Ghost, a stage illusion in 19th century London. Another influential theatre of magic was the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, where J N Maskelyne first displayed many principles of stage magic.
One of magic's greatest celebrities, Harry Houdini, did not own a theatre but performed around the world on many different stages. He achieved a high degree of renown in the pre television era. Most of his magic was based on escapology, but the same principles apply to other forms of magic. Although he was genuinely skilled in such crafts as lockpicking, his stage act included many elements of modern conjuring. He led the field of vanishing large objects by making an elephant disappear on stage, for example. He effectively combined his real skills in gymnastic maneouvres and safecracking, with the use of gimmicked equipment and collusion with members of the audience, to achieve his effects.
The purpose of a magic trick is to amuse and create a feeling of wonder; the audience is generally aware that the magic is performed using trickery, and derives enjoyment from the magician's skill and cunning. Usually, magicians will refuse to reveal their methods to the audience. The reasons for these include:
Furthermore, some magicians have taken the controversial position that revealing the methods used in certain tricks can enhance the appreciation of the audience for how clever the trick is. Penn and Teller frequently perform tricks using transparent props to reveal how it is done, for example, although they almost always include additional unexplained tricks at the end that are made even more astonishing by the revealing props being used.
One principle that underlies many magic tricks is misdirection, which is the act of drawing the audience's attention to one location while, in another location, the magician performs a crucial manipulation undetected. For example, by drawing attention to one hand by snapping the fingers, tossing and catching a prop, or saying "watch this hand", the performer can force the audience to look, however briefly, in a certain direction, and use this as cover for what the other hand is doing.
Misdirection can also mean to re-direct or re-structure the spectator's perception of the action taking place. For example, telling a person to look into the empty box when really a secret compartment hides something. The word 'empty' is used to restructure their perception of the box. Another example is when placing something from one hand into another accompanied by the appropriate phrase and expression when really the item is not placed where it is said to go.
Many different techniques are used to create misdirection, and all require great amounts of practice to perfect. One technique is the use of natural-looking and confident movements, to disguise any surreptitious manipulations. Making a hand with a palmed coin move and behave like an empty hand is an acting skill used to misdirect the audience in coin magic. Another technique is the use of a confident flow of chatter from the magician, known as "patter". Patter may take the form of a story, or it may simply be the magician (selectively) narrating the actions being performed. Either way, it directs the attention of the audience wherever the magician wishes.
Another technique of misdirection is the use of optical illusions to hide or displace the location or size of objects. When the sides of a box are painted with concentric rectangles, or a hollow tabletop is beveled so that it is thicker in the center than at the edges, such containers appear to be much thinner than they actually are. These are often used in stage illusions, since they allow an assistant to hide in a space that appears to be too small to fit in, or to turn sideways and assume different positions in a box when there appears be too little room to move.
Apart from misdirection, some magic tricks can be classified by the type of technique used. For example, card magic includes a set of standard techniques for pretending to shuffle a set of cards, concealing cards in the hand (referred to as "palming"), and so forth; coin magic has a similar set of techniques for hiding and transferring coins. However, the majority of magic tricks cannot be classified in this way, and are sometimes referred to as "general magic."
In modern conjuring, it is not considered fully honest to give a performance which claims to be anything other than a clever and skilful deception. In today's cynical world, claims of actual supernatural powers would likely be greeted with ridicule, although many people were convinced that the hugely successful 1970s illusionist Uri Geller had a supernatural ability to bend spoons, for example (although Geller never claimed this). However, there are dishonest performers who use the techniques of conjuring for fraudulent goals. Cheating at card games is an obvious example, and is no more than a form of theft. During the height of the vogue for spiritualism and the wave of popularity for seances in the 19th century, many fraudulent mediums used conjuring methods to perform illusions at seances designed to convince those present of actual supernatural events; often, this was for financial gain. The great illusionist and escapologist Harry Houdini devoted much of his time to exposing fraudulent mediums. The spiritualists and mediums at work today tend to shy away from effects such as making knocking sounds in darkened rooms, and objects apparently moving without being touched, because these give rise to suspicions. Mediums of today mostly rely on the content of their messages to convince the audience.
Many simple conjuring tricks continue to be used to defraud the innocent, however often they have been exposed and debunked. The three card trick, also called "Find the Lady", is an old favourite of street hustlers and conmen; also, the shell game, in which a pea is hidden under one of three walnuts, is another means to separate a fool from his money. Although these are well known as frauds, some people are willing to lose money on them just for the entertainment value. There are other street hustles which use conjuring techniques and methods such as misdirection to commit theft.
This is an Article on Magic (illusion). Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Magic (illusion) History
Exposure of magic techniques
Membership in professional magicians' organizations often requires an oath not to reveal the secrets of magic to non-magicians. This is known as the "Magician's Oath". However, it is considered permissible to reveal secrets to individuals who are determined to learn magic tricks and become magicians. The secrets of almost all tricks are available to the public through numerous books and magazines devoted to magic, available from the specialised magic trade. There are also web sites which offer videos, DVDs and instructional materials for the aspiring conjuror. In this sense, there are few secrets left in the magic business; however this does not appear to have diminished the appeal of performances.Categories of magic
Magic performances fall into three broad genres:
Other specialties or niches have been created: Techniques
Misuse of Magic
See also
Notable magicians (see list of magicians for a more extensive list):
External links