Found 548 posts tagged ‘magician’ |
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Restoring the Lost Sense –
May 26, 2013 |
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Father Time learns about the quantum cups and balls 116 years before
physicists Billangeon and Nakamura publish their quantum cups and balls
in the journal Nature. An illustration from an 1896 issue of Punch magazine.
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| [Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost
sense of immediacy. We follow the founder of the Theater of
Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then
flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free. The images
we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.] |
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
April 12, 2013 |
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a hole in something what a card trick does to fingers
— Gary Barwin, "Because Birds" To our knowledge, only one person has thoroughly described what a card trick does to a magician's fingers. With each magical performance, the digitations are aroused to "borrow" or "liberate" according to new yearnings. Some fingers steal people's secrets, under the delusion that possessing elements of a personal life makes them one's own. Some steal other people's names, leaving in their wake individuals without any knowledge of who they were, forced to trust in the testimony of friends and relatives. Some steal time, with the logical intention of prolonging their days; they steal past time when in the mood to dwell upon memories; they steal present time when feeling constricted by immediate limitations; they steal future time out of the very lives of children when hard hit by the panic of impending dissolution. Some steal dreams, leaving others' sleep blank and uncharacterized. Some steal sleep itself so as to hibernate like a bear, leaving victims staring, on the verge of despair and madness, night after night in the indifferent dark. Some steal others' hope, though always leave just enough to keep them from suicide. We find these insights in Wendy Walker's masterpiece The Secret Service (1992), which we have here paraphrased. |
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Puzzles and Games –
January 23, 2013 |
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Jollification expert Bernie DeKoven highlights our oddest work yet — a book that transforms other books in surprising ways. As we confabulated with Bernie: The Dictionary Game (see also Fictionary) turns a serious reference book into a gaming generator; the dictionary is playfully transformed from a tool for decoding puzzling words into a puzzle-making machine, where whimsically fake definitions take the stage. But could any book, spontaneously pulled off the shelf, be transformed into a playfulness machine? Could one’s entire home library be a gaming center? That’s the lofty goal of a new publication that offers, among other oddities, cut-out paper spectacles for seeing more than is readily apparent in any book.
Please note that our Machinarium Verbosus is a book for the few—the very few. If it’s important to one’s psychological well-being that the machinations of the Universe be neat and
tidy and wholly comprehensible by the human mind, then absolutely do not proceed with
this book’s experiments. Let this constitute a very serious warning: do not take these experiments
lightly, as any one of them may induce an existential crisis. |
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Restoring the Lost Sense –
September 20, 2012 |
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An illustration from a 1904 issue of Saturday Evening Post magazine. The caption reads: "To reassure her he began doing incredible things with the big silver hoops." It was this illustration that inspired our article for Secret Art Journal, " Magic as Reassurance."
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| [Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost
sense of immediacy. We follow the founder of the Theater of
Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then
flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free. The images
we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.] |
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Go Out in a Blaze of Glory –
October 28, 2011 |
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We discovered this curious "ghost in a candle" trick in an issue of The Strand from 1895.
Here's the explanation of the trick candle, "invented by a man as a rather peculiar surprise for a friend. He made that friend a present of some coloured wax candles, one of which contained the affair shown. The receiver was very fond of having a few candles of the coloured kind placed about his drawing-room, in candelabra, and was intensely surprised one night when one of those which he had thankfully accepted from his friend exploded with a loud 'bang,' after having burnt down about half-way, and revealed to view a miniature ghost, with outstretched arms, which had issued from the remaining portion of the candle. To say that the man was puzzled by so extraordinary an apparition is to incompletely describe his feelings. I wonder how the reader would accept such a crisis. I know that I should have been very much astonished. Yet the effect was produced in an exceedingly simple manner, as can be understood by examining the drawings. The lower half of the candle really consisted of a thin cardboard case, containing a spring and a small 'ghost' with spring-arms, which would fly apart immediately upon being released from their bondage. A small portion of gunpowder, separated by a disc of paper from the head of the 'ghost,' completed the apparatus. The outside of the cylinder was waxed to appear as but the continuation of the candle. When the flame burnt to the powder it naturally caused it to explode, and simultaneously with the discharge the spring forced the little image upwards. This device would make an effective toy, I am inclined to think, as the cylinder could be used as often as required, by fixing a half-candle properly to the top of it and concealing the join."
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