Post by Chris Martin on Aug 3, 2005 7:00:36 GMT -5
Have we as magicians become overly entranced with technique in magic? Perhaps.
I recently heard someone complain that a well known magician was taking the easy way out....doing a trick in a less technically difficult way instead of using the "right" harder method. This puzzled me a great deal. Why would we as Magi's want to use the harder technique, if the easier way is just as effective? To do so seems to me foolhardy. Is it so that we can create a sense of our own superiority with a higher and higher level of technically difficult moves? Until at the end we don't have magic at all but simply a series of stunts that proves our own dexterity.
For example, take the Invisible Deck trick using a trick deck, versus the sleight of hand version. Both have the same end. However, the gaffed version seems to me more effective, because it is so clean. The effect is very linear, unlike the sleight of hand version which seems cluttered with extra moves.
What is the purpose of using the harder effect if the easy method is cleaner and more effective? I am not suggesting that one should always use the simpler effect or that one effect fits all situations. Only that we use the most effective. If they are both just as effective, why would one choose the harder method simply because it is harder?
By relying on knowledge and technicality, we diminish the scope of magic. In essence, we take what is multi-dimensional and render it flat and one dimensional. I do not believe this is done purposefully. I recently observed a professor/part-time magician who performed a few tricks for my college class. Technically, he was faultless but, there was no context, each trick was more technically difficult than the last. Until ultimately it dissolved into a series of unrelated trivial parlor tricks. In writing, a famous author once called this effect the "Gee Mom look how cool I'm writing" phase. Which is to be so caught up in the technicality of "superior" writing that it interferes with the audience's suspension of disbelief. I have to tell you that as I sat in that class watching my professor perform, it occurred to me that this was the magical equivalent of "Gee Mom look how cool I'm writing."
If our purpose in magic is to find more and more difficult tricks than I fear we will have missed the point entirely. We will pick magic down to its bare bones and in the end we will have nothing left but mundane technicality devoid of all the mysticism,illusion and creativity that is the very life blood of magic. Einstein said,"Any intelligent fool can make things more complex. It takes a touch of genus to move in the opposite direction." I personally believe David Blaine did this, taking magic, and reducing it to its simplest form is, in its own right, a form of genus.
The audience does not care how difficult a trick is. They care only for the illusion and wonder of the performance. We as magicians perhaps do care, and I believe we transpose this on to the audience. I have seen audiences awed with the simplest trick when presented in a serious and mysterious manner. Think about your first experience with magic, perhaps as a young child. I'd wager you had no clue how difficult the technique was. If you were like most of us, you cared only about the beauty of the illusion. I believe Eugene Burger said it best when he said, "Magic takes us out of the realm of the attainable skills, and into the world of the impossible."
I believe simply that in the pursuit of technical perfection we have lost sight of the ultimate end, the pursuit of the truly mystical, the creation of "Magic."
I recently heard someone complain that a well known magician was taking the easy way out....doing a trick in a less technically difficult way instead of using the "right" harder method. This puzzled me a great deal. Why would we as Magi's want to use the harder technique, if the easier way is just as effective? To do so seems to me foolhardy. Is it so that we can create a sense of our own superiority with a higher and higher level of technically difficult moves? Until at the end we don't have magic at all but simply a series of stunts that proves our own dexterity.
For example, take the Invisible Deck trick using a trick deck, versus the sleight of hand version. Both have the same end. However, the gaffed version seems to me more effective, because it is so clean. The effect is very linear, unlike the sleight of hand version which seems cluttered with extra moves.
What is the purpose of using the harder effect if the easy method is cleaner and more effective? I am not suggesting that one should always use the simpler effect or that one effect fits all situations. Only that we use the most effective. If they are both just as effective, why would one choose the harder method simply because it is harder?
By relying on knowledge and technicality, we diminish the scope of magic. In essence, we take what is multi-dimensional and render it flat and one dimensional. I do not believe this is done purposefully. I recently observed a professor/part-time magician who performed a few tricks for my college class. Technically, he was faultless but, there was no context, each trick was more technically difficult than the last. Until ultimately it dissolved into a series of unrelated trivial parlor tricks. In writing, a famous author once called this effect the "Gee Mom look how cool I'm writing" phase. Which is to be so caught up in the technicality of "superior" writing that it interferes with the audience's suspension of disbelief. I have to tell you that as I sat in that class watching my professor perform, it occurred to me that this was the magical equivalent of "Gee Mom look how cool I'm writing."
If our purpose in magic is to find more and more difficult tricks than I fear we will have missed the point entirely. We will pick magic down to its bare bones and in the end we will have nothing left but mundane technicality devoid of all the mysticism,illusion and creativity that is the very life blood of magic. Einstein said,"Any intelligent fool can make things more complex. It takes a touch of genus to move in the opposite direction." I personally believe David Blaine did this, taking magic, and reducing it to its simplest form is, in its own right, a form of genus.
The audience does not care how difficult a trick is. They care only for the illusion and wonder of the performance. We as magicians perhaps do care, and I believe we transpose this on to the audience. I have seen audiences awed with the simplest trick when presented in a serious and mysterious manner. Think about your first experience with magic, perhaps as a young child. I'd wager you had no clue how difficult the technique was. If you were like most of us, you cared only about the beauty of the illusion. I believe Eugene Burger said it best when he said, "Magic takes us out of the realm of the attainable skills, and into the world of the impossible."
I believe simply that in the pursuit of technical perfection we have lost sight of the ultimate end, the pursuit of the truly mystical, the creation of "Magic."