Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
the greatest card manipulator of our own time, Steve Forte,
Adam Gopnik • The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery
Walter had amassed a collection of hundreds of tapes, footage of wonder-workers that was otherwise impossible to find. He had clips dating back to 1896 and Georges Méliès’s vanishing act, Escamotage d’une dame chez Robert-Houdin. A seven-year-old Ricky Jay changing a guinea pig into a dove on the 1955 program Time for Pets. Every magician who ever
... See moreDerek DelGaudio • AMORALMAN: A True Story and Other Lies
dress and a muscular brunette in a do-rag. When he introduced me, he told them I was an amazing illusionist. We’d been winging together for months now, so I knew just what to do: fake them out with a couple of the practical jokes and pseudomagic tricks I’d learned in elementary school. In the field, one quickly learns that everything that was funny
... See moreNeil Strauss • The Game
Jean Robert-Houdin was famous for the opinion that a magician is actually just "an actor playing the part of a magician."
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
In his "Soiree Fantastique," Robert-Houdin's effect was presented as a magical box that could become heavy or light at will and thus protect itself from thieves. It was accomplished with a metal-lined box and an electromagnet beneath the stage-in the 1840s such magnets were little understood by the general public and not likely to be susp
... See moreTeller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
The real art is how the rubber band is handled with the finesse of a jewel cutter, how a mirror is used or concealed precisely, how a masterfulperformer can hint at impossibilities that are consummated with only a piece of thread.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
That photo, like Kellar's bold visit to the Egyptian Hall stage, wouldn't have shown him very much. It was actually the little tool that made the eyelets, and the felt-covered rollers-two simple additions that never looked very impressive backstage-that had made all the difference.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
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Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
the real "invention" of his Marvelous Orange Tree was combining sleight of hand and secret machinery into one seamless fantasy, deliberately blurring his techniques so that one started as the other left off.