Magic Simp

Last week I discussed the probabilities of three effects: ACAAN, Triumph, and sympathetic Rubik’s cube. The Out of this World effect slipped my mind last week so I’ll mention it today.

We’ll use magicpedia for the definition of the effect.

A spectator separates a deck of cards into reds and blacks without looking at the faces of the cards.

Unlike facing, card color is not independent. There are only 52 cards in a deck so if you know the color of the first 51, you can determine the color of the last card with total accuracy.

The ACAAN effect has a \(\frac{1}{52}\) chance of happening by coincidence. Some magicians try to hype up the effect by emphasizing the fact that there are \(52\) possible cards and \(52\) possible positions and imply the probability is \(\frac{1}{52} \cdot \frac{1}{52} = \frac{1}{2704}\) but this isn’t correct.

To see why, let’s start by considering randomly chosen card \(C\) and randomly chosen position \(i\). Assuming a full, standard deck and valid card and index choices, the chance of card \(C\) being somewhere in the deck is exactly \(1\). The card must be at one of the 52 locations. That is

Art build on history, society and technology. The Surrealism art movement started about a century ago. People were inspired by Freud’s study of the mind and the desire for freedom in the post WWI society to explore and let loose their subconscious.

Whereas the dreamlike nature of surrealist art is a product of the artist’s attempts to tap into the unconscious mind, it is a necessity in magic. Magical is an inherently surreal art form. A bunch of procedure that may not quite make sense or have any apparent purpose happens and then a surprising conclusion presents itself. Endut. Hoch hech.

FISM is introducing a new category for online magic. (There’s also one for street magic which is more traditional and less contentious.) Online magic is getting more and more popular and has significantly diverged from other types of magic I think it makes sense for it to be a category. There are some specific implementation details which I think will need to be worked out.

I feel like there should be a distinctinction between “social media magic” and “virtual magic”. I consider the fundamental difference in the two to be the lack of a live audience for social media magic. As such, you have more flexibility to create a magical effect. For example, you don’t have to worry about cleaning up because you can just cut the video. On the other hand, it won’t have the same personal connection of a virtual or in-person show. I’m guessing that the category is meant for “social media magic”.

Real magic doesn’t exist. Therefore, every magical effect has a flaw. A common argument people make when they want to denigrate an effect is to focus soley on the flaw.

Discussing the method to a trick isn’t inherently bad. In fact, it is necessary to understand how practical the trick is and whether it fits in the environment you’re working in.

The issue is when people use the existence of the flaw as a thought terminating cliche. An example argument tends to go like “This trick uses a gimmicked device. The gimmick is obvious. Therefore this is a bad trick.”

Conjuring Archive is a great website that lists different variations of magic tricks and what books you can find them in. It’s really useful for finding ideas on how to modify magic to fit your style. I especially love the “effects that are simply too hard to explain” category because of how Denis Behr’s comments describe the some effects. One of the best things about reading old magic books is finding moments when the author injects some personality inside an otherwise purely technical description of a trick.

Inject 2 is an app that lets you do various effects with a spectator’s phone. Its been having a bunch of issues since December of 2024. I don’t have the app largely because I don’t really trust myself not to drop a spectator’s phone and be left with a repair bill. I’ve never really leaned into the borrowed aspect of magic. I don’t like touching other people’s stuff.

Apps and software are fairly new in the grand scheme of things and its pretty interesting to hear all the discussion surrounding longevity. No one expects an apple to last years but you’d be upset if your brand new car rusts in a week. There’s a lot of debate about the ethics of preserving digital data and how much work companies should be required to do. The Stop Killing Games movement was started around August last year. Games are increasingly becoming online only and when the game developer shuts down the server, people will no longer be able to play. This also relates to important questions over software ownership which is another huge contentious topic.

Some of the back designs from the cards I bought to make Dazzle gimmicks are really nifty. Its quite a shame that a lot of those cards simply don’t have the right texture for a lot of magic tricks.

This photo doesn’t accurately capture the look of the shiny ink on certain cards. The quality of the ink really elevates the look of the airplane deck. The ink on the Desert Inn card is a lot more gold in person and pairs nicely with the green.

I recently bought a bunch of playing cards to make my own gimmicks for Alex Elmseley’s Dazzle. It was harder than I thought.

Some playing cards are straight up impossible to split cleanly. The printed layer is too thin and will simply rip instead of separate from the middle layer. I’ve been forced to just glue them together and suffer the extra thickness.

Some playing cards can only be split from one side. I guess they use different papers on the face and back. One side will to be easy to grab and pull and the other will just rip.