The year was 2004 and a group of cosmopolitan, metropolitan, Neapolitan (we all liked ice-cream) friends invited me to visit them in London, from whence we travelled to Camden Lock Market and I tried on many cool articles of clothing, none of which would comfortably stretch over my corpulent frame. I did however obtain some jewellery made from old circuit boards, all mounted in fixings that turned my skin green. 3/10, should have gone to Cyberdog.
Cyberdog wasn’t really my aesthetic at the time, but what IS an aesthetic?
Aesthetic is often used as a complicated way of referring to a look or fashion style, such as vapourwave, steampunk, goth, bdsm or the cultural appropriation of the Harajuku fashion scene.
Believe it or not this is a continuation of my series on the future and subversion of coin magic, but I’m coming at it from the other direction so buckle in as I explain a little art history.
A year or so after this jaunt to Camden Lock I heard a man on the radio state “We have no aesthetic for the inside of the human body.” he was pretentious and probably smelly but his main point was that aesthetics develop as a side effect of the shape of the world around us. Much classic art has a naturalistic aesthetic, lots of flowers, trees, animals. Clothing matched these things, with floral patterns, natural tones, furs. These days we have refined and concentrated these aesthetics into bloomcore, cottagecore and the furry fandom.
At the other end of this scale is Vapourwave, which is an aesthetic formed by a lifetime of exposure to 90s computer equipment¹, shopping malls intended to replicate a feeling of opulence and wealth akin to an ancient temple, garish fashion choices made available by the sudden widespread availability of synthetic materials and colours, and the slow inoffensive ambient music played in public spaces. Note that the architecture, colour scheme, visual style and digital tones were all introduced independently but their inescapably ubiquitous colocation imprinted on our tiny young millennial minds like baby birds and now we just nod soporifically and say “big mood” when we encounter it. The right shapes colours and sounds can lull us into submission as if it were a binder clip on the back of a kitten’s neck.
In its simplest form, an aesthetic is a visual (and sometimes auditory) style which emerges from regular prolonged simultaneous exposure to a collection of stimuli, to the point where you feel a degree of familiarity. So much familiarity that if you encounter one or two of them, you sort of feel the absence of the others… which brings us (finally) to the aesthetic of magic.
When asked to picture a magician, unless they have a particular magician in mind, most people will picture this guy:
The aesthetic of stage magic for years was that of robes and wizard hats but then a few daring chaps decided to dress like elegant wealthy gentlemen and now that’s become what magic is. more to the point, much like the cultural accretion of vapourwave 90s aesthetic, the magic aesthetic has grown like a pearl around the grit of this character, encompassing within it’s shiny hard surface the props and cliches which have accumulated Katamari-like on it’s surface. The aesthetic of magic conjures images of wands, rabbits, cups and balls, playing cards, doves, ropes, silk handkerchieves, large metal rings and of course coins.
It may seem unlikely but things can drop out of the aesthetic. For the longest time, cigarettes were part of the general aesthetic of magic, but recognition of their nature as toxic addictive cancer sticks has very rapidly reduced their usage² for all but a few performers, most of whom don’t even use real cigarettes anymore. Time will tell if a new genre of magic emerges from vaping.
So whilst many of the old sleights performed with cigarettes have been re-configured to work with pencils, candy sticks and lollipops³, very few magicians have applied the same thinking to the replacement of coins.
Two examples which spring to mind are Jay Sankey’s use of washers in his trick Holy Moly and the Diamond Jim Tyler New Age Spellbound routine from Pockets Full of Miracles, which ostensibly uses a gemstone stone but is in truth performed with circular drop-pebbles of coloured glass. There is also the growing interest in poker chip magic, though it seems pretty clear to me that the sudden adoption of this aesthetic is far more to do with the relative ease in manufacturing gaffed casino chips when compared to the skilled metalwork involved in producing the very same effects with circulating currency. I’m looking at you, Sucker Punch by Mark Southworth.
These are the kinds of aesthetic choices (industrial, new age crystal, gambling) that can be applied to the physical methodologies of coin magic to produce new routines with original premises. Before I make my final point on this topic, I’d like to suggest a few others:
- Buttons – arts and crafts
- Gemstone Slices⁴ – new age
- Runestones – pagan
- Badges – youth / promotional
- Mini Cheddars (google it) – youth / snack food
- Wooden Board Game Counters – intellectual
- Tiddlywinks – eccentric intellectual
- Guitar Picks – rockstar
- Seashells (not all kinds, specifically scallop shells) – naturalistic
- Cogs – steampunk
- Pogs – Jimpunk⁵
Of course these will have various levels of success with varying types of coin routines, some are thicker, some are more round, some have more weight to them, but one key factor that I’m sure people are screaming right now is “But Stacy, I perform a borrowed coin routine! I borrow the coins so that people know they’re real, but if I turn up with seashells or guitar picks people will think they’re special magic props!”
This is of course very true, which is why I have two additional pieces of advice.
When you begin a routine like this, bring a bag of these things and let the audience pick them out, and keep them at the end if they like. Other than the gemstone slices, runestones, and seashells, these items are easily affordable in bulk. And those three can probably be faked on the cheap at home using heavy resin or plaster casting to make a plentiful supply. If you show a large number of things and let the audience choose, even if they’re all identical, it gives the impression that they can’t all be specialist magic props⁶.
The second is to use these specifically for signed coin routines, because I firmly believe that there is a secondary purpose to having objects signed, and that means it’s soapbox time. People always talk about how having props signed is a way of proving that there is only one in play, with no duplicates, or in some cases that a magically altered item hasn’t just been switched (even if the routine specifically involves duplicating the signature and switching out the object). This mode of thinking however has led to an increasing number of routines that involve asking spectators to sign an object still being held by the performer, or cards sticking half way out of a deck, because there’s some fishy aspect of it which needs to be hidden in the signing procedure. I myself have succumbed to this technique once or twice and it robs the spectator of one of the best reasons to sign an object: To handle it. Nothing acts as a greater convincer of the authenticity of an object than holding it in their own hands to interact with it in some way. Signing or marking it is a great interaction to serve this purpose.
Some of these will make better souvenirs than others, some will fit different presentations or characters, and it is not even close to an exhaustive list. I just think if magicians can embrace the spirit of creativity and innovation, theres no end to the-
I’m sorry I can’t even finish that sentence. The very fact that I didn’t provide any concrete examples to copy probably means this advice will be ignored by 99% of the people who read it. Given that I only have about 4 readers that doesn’t exactly bode well.
*big sigh*
In my next post I’m going to give ideas for the replacement of paper money.
¹ Starting with home PCs but keep in mind that we still see Windows 95 and Windows XP error messages on public computer controlled signage and automated kiosks to this day.
² Sadly the recognition of capitalism as a toxic dearth of humanity has not seen a similar effect on the usage of money in magic. Ironically one of the most famous cigarette magicians of what we laughably call the modern age, Tom Mullica, never saw any ill effects from his famous cigarette act. Despite the somewhat tasteless jokes, his eventual passing was due to complications during routine hernia surgery and totally unrelated to cancer, emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or black lung.
³ I have seen little to no interest in my reworking of signed card to cigar using a borrowed tampon.
⁴ Yes this is the origin of this post’s title. I originally intended to offer far more discussion on the kinds of routines that could be done using these, but actually I’d rather leave that as an exercise for the reader rather than limit your imagination by offering an initial direction.
⁵ Shout out to everyone’s favourite non-binary westling leftist videogame industry analyst.
⁶ Even though the most versatile of magic props is an just extra additional one of any given number of identical items.