Tag: Therapy

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Cargo Cultists
or Dream Big, Buy Bigger

I recently had an argument in a pub with another magician who had a trick to show me. I won’t go into the trick, what you need to know is that it used a deck of cards with beautifully complex illustrations on them.

Oh wait did I say illustrations? I meant AI generated images. But this post isn’t about that. This post is about one of the things he said in the ensuing argument.

He said that without the AI he never would have been able to create 52 illustrated cards, that the art would have cost too much from a real artist¹, and so this wasn’t hindering any artists careers, since there was no version of this where he hired an artist. He either used AI or the trick never got made.

I said maybe if you can’t do something without the AI, you probably shouldn’t do it at all.

He didn’t like that.

Continue reading “Cargo Cultists
or Dream Big, Buy Bigger”

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Tortured Artists
or We don’t use that word here

This post sat in my drafts for a year, because I needed to work through some thoughts, which I did in these three posts.

A number of people have brought the following recent article to my attention:

Magicians Less Prone To Mental Disorders Than Other Artists

Given that the Magic Circle has a whole mental health programme to look after its members mental health I can’t help but feel that suggesting magic is a ticket to good mental health might be papering over some actual problems, but that’s not what this is really about.

Because everyone knows to be an artist you have to be nuts, right? You have to be so tortured by the delusional visions visiting you at night that the only respite is to capture them on canvas or in writing. The music of the damned plays in your head until you can share it with other people to alleviate the burden of being alone with forbidden knowledge.

Right? That’s what we all know about being creative, its a curse.

Right?

Continue reading “Tortured Artists
or We don’t use that word here”

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I Think I Understand You But I Don’t
or It’s Such a Beautiful Day

I recently went to see a one night only touring single showing of my favourite film: Don Hertzfeldt’s it’s Such a Beautiful Day, preceded by a new short musical film from the same animator. My wife came with me and she utterly fucking hated it. Interestingly, she also kind of hated Derek Delgaudios In and Of itself, to my mind one of the greatest magic shows ever concieved.

I also gave my older sibling¹ a copy of the blu-ray of It’s Such a Beautiful Day several years ago as a christmas gift and on boxing day they watched it with their partners and my parents every single one of them hated it.

“It’s depressing,” they say, “It doesn’t make sense,” they exclaim, “What the hell did I just watch?”

So here’s my question: how does one invoke such reactions to a magic show?
Continue reading “I Think I Understand You But I Don’t
or It’s Such a Beautiful Day”

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Would You Like Fries with That
or STEM the Flow

I studied engineering in university. Software and Electronic to be exact.

This is not an uncommon story. Dai Vernon studied mechanical engineering, Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin built automata, and Robert Harbin is the most well known of a long line of illusion designers working from mechanical know how. Even Jesus started out in carpentry¹.

And isn’t that kind of weird?

In any other performance art, the technical side is relegated to backstage. Set builders, lighting technicians, audio engineers. The actors, musicians, and dancers on stage very rarely entered the arts because they loved the working of curtain pulley systems, valve amplifier schematics or shoe construction.

The obvious reason for this is that magic most commonly instills in its audience a desire to know how it works, and wanting to know how things work is also a strong drive in engineering and science education.

But this has further implications, linking my previous post to the world of STEM education, elitism in academia, and Gamergate. Yes, Gamergate.

Buckle the fuck in. It’s going to get bumpy.

Continue reading “Would You Like Fries with That or STEM the Flow”

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How We Got Here
or Entry Points and Exit Wounds

This is going to pull together a number of threads, so forgive me if it takes a while to make any kind of definitive statement.

In my last post I mentioned the concept of magician’s ego, the fact that when presenting what appears to be a strange or coincidental occurrence, the natural urge is to fabricate some narrative in which there is zero doubt that the magician is the root cause, even if the power of the effect is in the appearance that the magician does nothing.

But there’s a lot more to it than that.

Continue reading “How We Got Here
or Entry Points and Exit Wounds”