The conference has been hyped for months now, so if you don't know what it is all about, go screw yourself aka read iTricks or The Magic Newswire. They've been drooling over this for a while now.
Here it is anyways:
So what will I be expecting... Nothing essential I guess. I am not growing fond of this weird trend in magic to link it to psychology and science. To have psychologist study magic in order to understand how humans perceive things. And it seems like we magicians are helping this. There is nothing wrong with scientists trying to understand psychology, but I do have a hard time believing that magic should be scrutinized that way.
It is true that magicians have a more intuitive knowledge of the human perception. We may not know why a certain combination of methods fool most of the people, but we simply know. And that is enough in order to do magic.
Don't support science, unless they are doing something for us! (Money or Bookings)
What else does the EMC promise? I guess it will be a lot of good magicians pimping themselves and discussing magic theory.... - that is what magic books are for.
I don't expect too much, but I will look into it.
I am making a prediction here: There will be a Top Change discussion.
PS. If I were you I would not watch. Wait, until the first rips of the DVD are out and real reviews of this event are out.
3 comments:
If you know "why" something works, it makes doing it correctly a lot easier.
Case in point, if people knew how misdirection actually worked through a scientific experiment, they might actually apply the guided direction it should really be.
Also, perhaps I'm biased in favor of science, but if Teller supports a scientific article about magic and perception, then who are we to argue?
does it make things easier? Sure it does. But you don't have to be a scientist to find out how shit works. Sure knowing why it works is cool, but if you are intuitivly do it right, than what does science offer? Sure Teller supports that... But Teller is no almighty. Again, I am all for supporting the science if we gain somthing. But so far it seems like we magicians just spoil all the secrets towards the scientist and all we get is lame stuff like "amodal completion" which is the fact that when we see part of somthing we tend to see the whole thing. In magic an example would be the Downs palm. We see the hand, and naturally assume, also we can't see behind the thumb that there is nothing. Wow, what an achivement...
An understanding of certain sciences can greatly aid a magician in his/her performances and in the design of effects. Psychology immediately comes to mind, along with the study of the senses. Understanding these things allows the performer to take advantage of peculiarities inherent within each of those systems to create and/or enhance an effect.
Having not seen any of the presentations, I can certainly understand any skepticism one may have. Everything in magic has almost always been marketed as "the best", a "must have", or "essential", and they almost never are. If they were, most magicians would not have a collection of items that did not meet their expectations.
But, that being said, I have to respectfully disagree in that I believe that having a scientific understanding of why tricks work, not how, is of benefit to the performer and benefits the art as a whole.
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