Creativity. What is it? How do I get some? Do you get student discount?
All but the latter of the three; are questions I'm asked every day. Facebook, Msn, E-mail......no matter how you communicate it, it seems every aspiring magician would like help with this word.
The following material will hopefully be able to give you some insight into thinking, whether consciously or otherwise, with a creative outlook on everyday concepts, to create new ideas, and give you a personal, unique, and original approach when making new associations between existing methods, or new hypotheses.
So lets start with..... Why?
Why do you want to be creative?
Is it a need to be famous? To earn money? A necessity for life? Or simply an urge to explore your own potential?
The main focus on this thesis is creativity within the art of magic.
Art in its purest definition is the product of human creativity.
So with that genre of art, which encompasses our love for magic, our very ideal should be to display a creative, unique and entertaining, if not inspiring form of deception.
I crave creativity to be original. To be the best, and to do nothing more than feed my own ego.
It is my biggest flaw, and my strongest attribute at all times.
Once you have worked out why you find the need to create an expression of your own 'ART' you will be understanding yourself, and least importantly, the rest of this document.
Inspiration can come in many forms, from your perception of a non-magical occurrence in every day life, to a forced flicker of an idea, to what is actually possible.
Lloyd Barnes and myself started a website called www.disturbreality.com as we felt that we had something to offer the magic community.
Creative new methods, for new era trickery.
Magic accessible to everyone who is living it.
We want to everyone to push the boundaries of what is perceived to be possible in reality.
Our job is to amaze, and inspiration for material can come from the drink you're quenching your thirst with, to the chair your sitting on, to the pack of cards in your grasp.
You can continue to read if you humour the idea that inspiration can be derived from EVERYTHING!
By now you should understand your passion, determination, the way in which you find inspiration and perceive it.
Each person is different, and thinks differently, so you could argue that "some people have it, and some people don't".
If that were the case, some people wouldn't be able to learn a new skill, but with enough practice, thought and preparation.... anything is possible.
Firstly.......Relax, don't force it.
Ideas don't come because you want them to, they come as you are able to freely think, so my main tip is relax.
This next part may sound a bit weird, but most of my ideas come to me at night, when I sit in a dimly lit room listening to music, and practicing with a deck of cards, or few coins, or whatever materials used to pull of such miracles.
That is where I feel most relaxed and can let my mind wander.
The next tip is to take something you want to achieve, and reverse engineer a method for such a feat.
I often ask spectators what they would like to see, and trust me you get some good information from them.
Although most of them just want to see you do David Blaine's rendition of card through window.
Taking card through window as an example, I often make a list of all the bad points of a trick or sleight, and work out a way to do the same effect, but with less bad points.
You often come up with a better method, or more solid handling for something.
If you don't want to use a dupe, or a stooge, or simply can't afford to chuck your deck on the floor, or in my case; are too lazy to demoralize yourself, but pulling off a godly effect, such as throwing a card through a solid pane of glass, only to be clambering all over the floor as your receive your applause, making sure you have the entire deck.
Slow down I hear you cry, this information is gold, I need to write it down...... have no fear magi.... let's do a re-cap of things to get your creative juices flowing:
1. Relax and get comfortable
2. Don't forget that inspiration is all around you.
3. Try to think of the finished effect, then engineer a method. ( OR ... )
4. Take current sleights and tricks on the market and make a list of all the things you don't like. Then create a method to remove the bad points, thus creating and entirely new method for an effect you love.
Games are fun, and competitive. They can come with rules, but no matter what, each individual always has their way of following said rules.
Individuality and originality exist in everyone who plays a game.
So here is my idea for you.....
It has been said that there are 10 theories of magic:
* Production
* Vanish
* Transposition
* Transformation
* Multiplication
* Penetration
* Restoration
* Suspension
* Levitation
* Mentalism ( thanks to thecuso.info for these ten )
What you can do with magician friends, friends, colleagues or family members is pick an object at random, something that you could use in a magical performance, then randomly pick a theory of magic.
You could come up with umm Pen > Transposition for example, then work out how you would want the pen to transpose, and with what.
It could be the pen and it's cap changing places...... but think of the circumstances, would it be at your fingertips, in someones pockets, under a table, in a bowl. You decide!
I've played this game, and a chewing gum restoration came of it. It is now my most performed effect of the week so far. I must of done it like 20 times to different spectators over the course of the past 3 days.
Which proves that the game could spark that primary ignition on your creative flare ( excuse the pun ).
I'm not saying that I'm an expert, but clearly people are emailing me for a reason.
As always, try to make everything as natural and motivated as possible, as it will add to your deception.
I have had hundreds of emails or conversations about the very information above, and I hope that as a set of ideas and methods, this can introduce you to a whole world of possibility, and give you some insight into the question everyone asks, but no-one gets the answer to.
Cheers,
Geraint Clarke
// DisturbReality.com
All but the latter of the three; are questions I'm asked every day. Facebook, Msn, E-mail......no matter how you communicate it, it seems every aspiring magician would like help with this word.
The following material will hopefully be able to give you some insight into thinking, whether consciously or otherwise, with a creative outlook on everyday concepts, to create new ideas, and give you a personal, unique, and original approach when making new associations between existing methods, or new hypotheses.
So lets start with..... Why?
Why do you want to be creative?
Is it a need to be famous? To earn money? A necessity for life? Or simply an urge to explore your own potential?
The main focus on this thesis is creativity within the art of magic.
Art in its purest definition is the product of human creativity.
So with that genre of art, which encompasses our love for magic, our very ideal should be to display a creative, unique and entertaining, if not inspiring form of deception.
I crave creativity to be original. To be the best, and to do nothing more than feed my own ego.
It is my biggest flaw, and my strongest attribute at all times.
Once you have worked out why you find the need to create an expression of your own 'ART' you will be understanding yourself, and least importantly, the rest of this document.
Inspiration can come in many forms, from your perception of a non-magical occurrence in every day life, to a forced flicker of an idea, to what is actually possible.
Lloyd Barnes and myself started a website called www.disturbreality.com as we felt that we had something to offer the magic community.
Creative new methods, for new era trickery.
Magic accessible to everyone who is living it.
We want to everyone to push the boundaries of what is perceived to be possible in reality.
Our job is to amaze, and inspiration for material can come from the drink you're quenching your thirst with, to the chair your sitting on, to the pack of cards in your grasp.
You can continue to read if you humour the idea that inspiration can be derived from EVERYTHING!
By now you should understand your passion, determination, the way in which you find inspiration and perceive it.
Each person is different, and thinks differently, so you could argue that "some people have it, and some people don't".
If that were the case, some people wouldn't be able to learn a new skill, but with enough practice, thought and preparation.... anything is possible.
Firstly.......Relax, don't force it.
Ideas don't come because you want them to, they come as you are able to freely think, so my main tip is relax.
This next part may sound a bit weird, but most of my ideas come to me at night, when I sit in a dimly lit room listening to music, and practicing with a deck of cards, or few coins, or whatever materials used to pull of such miracles.
That is where I feel most relaxed and can let my mind wander.
The next tip is to take something you want to achieve, and reverse engineer a method for such a feat.
I often ask spectators what they would like to see, and trust me you get some good information from them.
Although most of them just want to see you do David Blaine's rendition of card through window.
Taking card through window as an example, I often make a list of all the bad points of a trick or sleight, and work out a way to do the same effect, but with less bad points.
You often come up with a better method, or more solid handling for something.
If you don't want to use a dupe, or a stooge, or simply can't afford to chuck your deck on the floor, or in my case; are too lazy to demoralize yourself, but pulling off a godly effect, such as throwing a card through a solid pane of glass, only to be clambering all over the floor as your receive your applause, making sure you have the entire deck.
Slow down I hear you cry, this information is gold, I need to write it down...... have no fear magi.... let's do a re-cap of things to get your creative juices flowing:
1. Relax and get comfortable
2. Don't forget that inspiration is all around you.
3. Try to think of the finished effect, then engineer a method. ( OR ... )
4. Take current sleights and tricks on the market and make a list of all the things you don't like. Then create a method to remove the bad points, thus creating and entirely new method for an effect you love.
Games are fun, and competitive. They can come with rules, but no matter what, each individual always has their way of following said rules.
Individuality and originality exist in everyone who plays a game.
So here is my idea for you.....
It has been said that there are 10 theories of magic:
* Production
* Vanish
* Transposition
* Transformation
* Multiplication
* Penetration
* Restoration
* Suspension
* Levitation
* Mentalism ( thanks to thecuso.info for these ten )
What you can do with magician friends, friends, colleagues or family members is pick an object at random, something that you could use in a magical performance, then randomly pick a theory of magic.
You could come up with umm Pen > Transposition for example, then work out how you would want the pen to transpose, and with what.
It could be the pen and it's cap changing places...... but think of the circumstances, would it be at your fingertips, in someones pockets, under a table, in a bowl. You decide!
I've played this game, and a chewing gum restoration came of it. It is now my most performed effect of the week so far. I must of done it like 20 times to different spectators over the course of the past 3 days.
Which proves that the game could spark that primary ignition on your creative flare ( excuse the pun ).
I'm not saying that I'm an expert, but clearly people are emailing me for a reason.
As always, try to make everything as natural and motivated as possible, as it will add to your deception.
I have had hundreds of emails or conversations about the very information above, and I hope that as a set of ideas and methods, this can introduce you to a whole world of possibility, and give you some insight into the question everyone asks, but no-one gets the answer to.
Cheers,
Geraint Clarke
// DisturbReality.com