I have been developing recently new effects for my show and I have been gaining insight from past magicians from Tommy Wonder to Blackstone and even more recent magicians like Dan White. Something I have noticed or think I have noticed is a trend in magic today that I'm not sure is a good thing but perhaps it is and I just have a different opinion. So naturally, I would like to start a topic on the evolution of magic over the years.
I was watching the other day a street magician perform an effect for a spectator, the quarter bite. What I found that i didn't like was how they came up to the spectator asked to show them something, borrow a quarter, bite it, restore it and leave. it made me realize how much I can dislike the presentation aspect of street magic in that context. Then there are the youtube magicians, who spend countless hours on the g.o.a.t. change, the pass, and snap changes that they will never use other than to make that one video showing their perceived prowess. What ever happened to justification?
This is where my thoughts have come in. How can you perform a bit of magic that for all intensive purposes is just pointless and lacking any reason. A quarter bite can be a very powerful bit of magic that should not be performed randomly for someone and leaving them without so much as another thought. Maskelyne and Devant in their book Our Magic talk about the necessity of justification. If you cannot justify the effect then it is not worth the effort. I have found personally this has improved my performances and my creation of effects. I feel as though magic is following a trend of the shock magic or the for the sake of the effect. To throw the reason out and make nothing more than a puzzle. If you have ever played the game of snaps it easily can become "magical" if presented with purpose and it becomes a pointless piece of 'show off skills' with out purpose. I want to see more magicians striving for the "hero" persona not the "god" that I believe Banachek talks about. A Magician should not come across as the instigator of some otherworldly power that they alone have but as a person who understand just enough, that gives plausibility to an effect and increases the justification as well.
I could go on for a while but I hope my point has come across. What are your thoughts? Do you see a trend in the pointless cool effects or the downward mobility of magic or am I just missing something and pining for a bygone era?
I was watching the other day a street magician perform an effect for a spectator, the quarter bite. What I found that i didn't like was how they came up to the spectator asked to show them something, borrow a quarter, bite it, restore it and leave. it made me realize how much I can dislike the presentation aspect of street magic in that context. Then there are the youtube magicians, who spend countless hours on the g.o.a.t. change, the pass, and snap changes that they will never use other than to make that one video showing their perceived prowess. What ever happened to justification?
This is where my thoughts have come in. How can you perform a bit of magic that for all intensive purposes is just pointless and lacking any reason. A quarter bite can be a very powerful bit of magic that should not be performed randomly for someone and leaving them without so much as another thought. Maskelyne and Devant in their book Our Magic talk about the necessity of justification. If you cannot justify the effect then it is not worth the effort. I have found personally this has improved my performances and my creation of effects. I feel as though magic is following a trend of the shock magic or the for the sake of the effect. To throw the reason out and make nothing more than a puzzle. If you have ever played the game of snaps it easily can become "magical" if presented with purpose and it becomes a pointless piece of 'show off skills' with out purpose. I want to see more magicians striving for the "hero" persona not the "god" that I believe Banachek talks about. A Magician should not come across as the instigator of some otherworldly power that they alone have but as a person who understand just enough, that gives plausibility to an effect and increases the justification as well.
I could go on for a while but I hope my point has come across. What are your thoughts? Do you see a trend in the pointless cool effects or the downward mobility of magic or am I just missing something and pining for a bygone era?