Not only that, but it has silent operation and higher reliability.
I have this mental picture of a bunch of fellows who design electronics for a living examining this perfectly normal (at the moment) boom box trying to figure out the trick. How did he do it? He was standing 15 feet away! The box with the cassette was mailed to someone we all know and trust! We opened the box, we played the tape, we tested the tape and the boombox and verified that they are both normal. I think that most engineers would be stumped.
I think magicians should avoid all technical apparatus, for the above reason.
The best trick I have ever seen: A swedish magician made a series of tv shows, where he approached tourists on beaches in sweden. Language problems with foreign tourists added to the comical effect. His nice personality and charm was a big part of his shows.
He did a few tricks with a red piece of cloth, like palming it and other classical stuff. When that trick was over he throws away the cloth over his shoulder and reaches for the next trick in his pocket, but the red piece of cloth does not fall to the ground, it starts to fly like a butterfly, and he and the people around him look at it with astonishment, as it gains speed and flies towards the forest behind the beach, it flies in among the trees and finally disappears some 200 meters away from the crowd at the beach.
That was just incredible. And the magician looked just as surprised as everybody else. "What the f*ck is that red cloth doing?"
Obviously he must have attached some thin, nearly invisible line to it, and had a motor in the forest, up in a tree, which pulled it in, with changing speeds, so it slowed down, picked up speed, slowed down, picked up speed and gradually the speed increased somewhat. The effect was that it was behaving like it was alive.
I was more impressed, and had more fun watching that trick, than any technical apparatus trick ever could have given.
We have a problem with people who try to get something built, often offering a few bucks for it. Such people think we are a bunch of high school kids who would be thankful for the chance of making a few bucks.
The reality is that most of the experts here are old and rich and very knowledgeble people who enjoy writing explanations, old engineers and writers of technical books. Such people have no need for small sums of money, less than 10000 dollars won't even get them off their chairs. It doesn't mean anything to people who have already made millions working for NASA, are responsible for the circuits inside every PC, are owning their own factories or are old authors of books and electronics magazine articles.
Give them an interesting question and they will write pages of explanations, and design circuits, but they will not build anything and are not interested in money.
He might find an exception, don't let me discourage anybody, I just want to inform the other person that the chances of getting anything built by these old geezers are not so big. But he can take their advices and circuit suggestions and find somebody locally to build it.
| The reality is that most of the experts here are old and rich and very | knowledgeble people who enjoy writing explanations, old engineers and | writers of technical books. Such people have no need for small sums of | money, less than 10000 dollars won't even get them off their chairs. It | doesn't mean anything to people who have already made millions working | for NASA, are responsible for the circuits inside every PC, are owning | their own factories or are old authors of books and electronics magazine | articles.
And the rest of us have all lost money on one-offs for non-commercial persons - sometimes more than once.
Ouch. I've written magazine articles, two technical books, am working on my third (as well as another series of articles for IBM), and I generally like writing explanations here and elsewhere. But I offered this guy to get out of my chair and do his little project for much less than 10k. I guess it must be because I'm not old. THAT must be the secret. Old people must have such difficulty rising from a seated position that they require stacks of cash - preferably in singles - to chock them up step by step. From an engineering standpoint, that's the most logical explanation, right?
You, and anyone of similar opinion, are, of course, very welcome to try.
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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk
Imagine hearing someone ask this question: "Why are you wasting your time developing your talent as a jazz musician? I personally find rock to be much more entertaining."
I'm not a close-up magcician, I'm a stage magician. My approach is different from others. I have done the cages, the sawing-in-half, the yada-yada. Now I'm getting into stuff that's a little more edgy: bullet catch, Russian roulette-style effects, and mentalism (which consists of mind reading, and seemingly impossible predictions like one with a boom box that I'm working on. I'll tell you about it someday...).
If all of us were making red hankies fly into the woods (or for that matter pulling rabbits out of hats), the profession would have died quicker than Betamax.
Avi
P.S. Before my Betamax comment inspires a flaming session, remember, I'm an electronics layperson trying to speak a new language here. Go easy on me :-)
There was no apparatus which the viewers could see. He did not start the trick by showing them a technical apparatus, explaining how it works, letting engineers check it, etc..
There was just a few people, in bathing suits, on the beach, and a little piece of red cloth.
I think a lot of the effect of this trick was created by the sudden change of the dimensions of the arena.
He was doing close-up magic tricks, less than a meter from the spectators, so the arena was a meter or less in diameter, between his hands and the viewers.
When that piece of red cloth started flapping away like a butterfly it went outside that arena, and suddenly the arena was hundreds of meters, or even longer, because it looked like that cloth could fly forever, to the horizon or longer, it was just hidden from the view when a few trees got in the way so they could not see it anymore.
Such a sudden change of the dimensions of the arena is very surprising to the mind of the viewers.
It is important to program the motor well in such a trick. It should work like a fisherman who pulls a bait through the water, with erratic movements, to look like a wounded fish which swims a little, sinks a little, over and over again.
That made the cloth look like it had wings and like it was flying like a butterfly.
Maybe you think about magic in a very technical sense, that there should be an impossibility which the viewers can never find out how it was done technically. And you think that is impressive.
I think more of the momentary feeling of astonishment, and the enjoyment of seeing something totally unbelievable. It doesn't matter to me if the viewers easily can understand how it was done 5 minutes later, when they have regained their senses from the shock.
Magic, to me, is entertainment, giving people a positive jolt of their senses, followed by a happy feeling and a laugh. It must be beautiful, simple, astonishing, and the presentation is the most important part of the trick.
You seem to have a more technical view of magic.
When a magician hangs a seemingly empty cage from the ceiling of a nightclub, covers it in black cloth, and seconds later removes the cloth and there is a white tiger in the cage.. that is totally boring to me. Anybody can do that trick, if he can afford to buy the machinery that is needed.
NASA admins do pretty well for themselves; yet it seems like the only way they can get a really good raise is to quit and take a job at Baton Rouge State! OTOH, truly obscene cash is awaiting the chancellor of Baton Rouge when he moves to U Washington. Talk about piggy-move-up!
1) Ditch the electronic trickery. With today's technology, it is too easy for the audience to write this off to a gimmicked recorder. And they'd be right.
2) Explain what you're doing over on alt.magic.secrets, and that you're looking for pointers on how to do it so technology is *not* suspected in quite such an obvious way.
There are many ways of doing similar things involving sealed predictions.
One major way to get the heat off the cassette recorder etc. is to use a borrowed audio device. Mobile Phone, iPod, cassette player etc. You now have to think how to get the prediction out of it, without modifying it.
This used to be done before people got savvy to FM audio senders, micro digital recorders etc. The presentation screams electronic gimmickry.
I doubt it. It's been done before in the past, and someone somewhere probably claims designs/patents rights.
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Mike Brown: mjb[at]pootle.demon.co.uk | http://www.pootle.demon.co.uk/
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