by mrandish | 2025-06-11 17:19:43+00:00
> were in fact - paid audiences.

I hadn't heard that. It also strikes me as a little odd since both of those effects can be done for real so there's no good reason to cheat in that way. Houdini popularized the elephant vanish as part of his stage show over a hundred years ago and Copperfield vanished a Lear jet from an airport tarmac in one of his early TV specials. The jet was completely surrounded by blindfolded audience members who were holding hands. I know how both were done and neither relied on a stooge audience.

Streaming video and social media have been mostly terrific for the art of magic as there's a tremendous amount of excellent performance material now widely available. Even more importantly, anyone interested in learning magic can access very high-quality instruction videos. There's also interactive instruction with top notch magicians available one-on-one and in groups via Zoom. Growing up I got to see magic once or twice a year on TV and when I wanted to learn how to do it the local library had exactly three magic books. Fortunately, I happened to live in the Los Angeles area, auditioned for the Magic Castle and got accepted as as a junior member (a kind of apprentice program), where I was mentored by some of the greatest magicians of the 20th century and had access to the world's largest magic library. I was very, very lucky because 99.99% of teens interested in magic had nothing like that. Today, there's so much great magic readily available the only problem is curating what to see and learn.

The downside of streaming video magic is there's an entire generation of magicians who've only performed alone in their own house via recorded video clips. This has led to some oddly perverse outcomes. Not having a live, interactive and unpredictable audience eliminates a huge part of the challenge of magic. Some of the sleight of hand effects I've seen from Youtube-only performers only really look great from the exact angle of that one camera shot. Also, nailing some high-difficulty sleights every time can take years of practice but when you can make dozens of attempts and only post 'the good one', it's a different thing than repeatedly doing it five shows a night. Magic is really about solving for constraints, so having infinite 'backstage' time to prepare one effect as well as being able to 'cleanup' afterward hidden from the audience is profoundly different than creating a non-stop sequence of different effects while surrounded by a live audience looking wherever they want, whenever they want.

As a magical inventor, the thought of creating a new magic effect solely for the context of one-stationary-camera, single-effect-per-clip with infinite attempts is like shooting fish in a barrel. It removes so many constraints it's almost not even interesting from my perspective. It's like those amazing demo scene graphical demos on a 1987 Amiga 500. They're amazing because they create those effects within the constraints of the Amiga 500. Creating the same visual effects on a Geforce 5090 is hardly the same challenge. My Mom wouldn't understand why and, in much the same way, a non-magician may not understand how some Youtube magic isn't the same challenge as creating the same effect in an unpredictable, uncontrolled live context. And I'm not even talking about video editing tricks or special effects. Performing a single trick exactly one time (out of dozens of attempts) for a 'one-eyed' single-person audience whose head is locked down on a stationary tripod at one angle and who is blindfolded immediately before and afterward is, for many types of magic effects, as big a difference as that Geforce 5090 is to an Amiga. Both the Geforce and Amiga demos can look equally impressive but the skill, artistry and challenge are vastly different. I also suspect creating the demo on an Amiga vs 5090 was a lot more fun because it's a much more interesting challenge.