Dancing With Invisibility

In 2013 I undertook an Honors year in Theatre and Performance at Monash University. I wanted to understand how magic works, and why we can be so easily fooled by the psychological manipulations of a clever performer. My underlying theory is that reality is a fluid, nebulous concept that is shaped and distorted by those with the power to do so, in order to promote their vested interests. In this way the magician seeking to create an experience of true wonder, is like the politicians, media moguls and those who promote the interests of rampant capitalism - creating an unique reality that backs up their actions. 

This thesis is about how magicians create these magical worlds, and the psychological tools that they use to do so. It was received well by Monash University, and many people have asked to read it - below is the introduction, and at the end of this post you can find a link to download the full document. Please do not reproduce any part of this work without first contacting me, and including sufficient bibliographical citation of my authorship. Ultimately by investigating magical methods, I hope to create a tool by which we can understand and break free from the covert manipulation of our attention - which is a prime tool of those who would like to stifle change and awareness. I hope that you enjoy reading. 

MITCH JONES

Dancing with Invisibility - full text

Introduction

How does magic work? As a popular entertainer, I have had access to a special form of performance based knowledge that draws on a historically continuous line of performers passing on ideas and observations. I can spot the difference between a real sideshow stunt and a gaffed (fake) one. I can see the exertion and concentration required for a contortionist to dislocate his shoulder, or for the sword swallower to relax the diaphragms in their throat. From stage I can pick the subtle pointers given by an audience which tell when they will cheer the loudest, or when they need to be seduced. But until late last year, I had a never thought to interrogate the methods behind magical performance. Many times I have seen things performed that amazed me – a travelling mentalist who could make randomly chosen cards from a mark’s[1] wallet fly into his own hand without ever touching them, or levitate a full packet of cigarettes from the table until it balanced on its edge. One year at a party for my twenty-second birthday a talented performer friend arrived and as a gift selected several spoons at random from our cutlery draw. He then stunned the room of late night revellers by making them twist and melt right before our faces. As a seasoned performer myself, it was a deliberate decision that I made not to pry into these incredible effects. I wanted to enjoy them as an outsider, and to feel that sense of untainted amazement. But eventually the lure of hidden knowledge was too strong, and the desire to know and understand the methods of magical performance drew me to it, like a moth to a flame.

It was a semi related area of my research that brought me towards magic. I was designing a performance centred around the idea of trickster god mythology. Characters within this archetype include Loki the Norse trickster, Coyote the Native American shape shifter and Hermes, the Ancient Greek messenger god. The role attributed to Hermes in the Ancient Greek pantheon is one that resonated throughout the European middle ages, via the writings of Hermes Trismegistus[2]. As the messenger to the Gods, Hermes traverses the space between earth and heavens, between body and spirit, and thus he is the carrier of sacred knowledge about the true nature of the world. However he is also the god of mischief, and his messages are riddles, giving rise to the contemporary philosophical study of Hermeneutics – the interpretation of meaning. Thus Hermes is one of only two figures in Ancient Greek literature to be described as ‘polytropic’ – “one who turns many ways” (the other is Odysseus – himself a wily figure).[3] The idea of a polytropic trickster, that sees truth and indeed reality as a process of interpretation fascinated me. How can something which is one way, simultaneously be something different? And how do we determine truth from our subjective interpretation? The area in which I chose to pursue these questions was illusion. Illusions such as spoon bending or levitation produce an amazing wonderment in the audience that is the result of seeing something that is plainly impossible, yet for which another explanation cannot be determined. When performing illusions magicians are enacting polytropic truths – elaborately designed fictions that contain symbolic narratives about the nature of the world. It seemed to me that if I were to understand how magic, and indeed perception itself worked, I would be one step closer to hacking into the framework of reality.

The study of magical methods has indeed led me to important observations about how ‘reality’ is constructed. In this thesis I will argue that magic succeeds  when the performer has created a dramaturgical frame for the effects that induces the audience to wonder and awe. The magician builds an alternative reality within their performance where the impossible is experienced as real, and true magic lies within this theatrical environment. The application for this thesis in other fields is clear – for instance when politicians frame a debate around issues or policies that they seek to promote[4], they are similarly manipulating and misdirecting the perception of their audiences to consider things one way and not the other. It is within this theatrical/social context of belief systems guided by the manipulation of perceptions, that the physical and technical skill of magicians takes on immense power – an observation that is reinforced when we consider the religious origins of popular magic.

My research in this area has drawn on academic interest in magic across several fields. In recent years cultural studies scholars such as Michael Mangan[5] and Simon During[6] have released significant studies about magic and its historical place within Western social development. In both their works, the early chapters which analyse contemporary magic as a descendant of religious magic have been of great use. In recent years several groups of scientists have begun using magic as a research tool to investigate attention and perception. Neuroscientists such as Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde claim that the study of magic and it’s techniques can assist in determining the ‘neural correlates of consciousness’.[7] These experiments have proven that conjurers manipulate our cognitive processes in order to influence what we see. This reinforces my contention that the dramaturgy of magical performance affects our experience on many levels. Finally one other major area of use has been the writings of magicians themselves – as a trade based social group magicians are remarkable for their level of introspection. Usually published in small editions, non-scholarly books on magic are highly valued resources for my work, in that they contain knowledge which is based not only upon the layered and practiced observations of expert performer/authors, but also because they draw on the observations of prior generations to construct a highly focused and literate magical world view.

I begin my thesis by discussing the historicity of magic, because in order to understand magical methods it necessary to ask who the magician is. Where does the role of the magician emerge from, what social needs does it fulfil, how does it reference our shared social cosmologies, and what is the contemporary significance of these traditions that modern magic has evolved from? In chapter one I will discuss this historical backdrop, and its importance as an element of the dramaturgy that is present within contemporary magic. This discussion will then lead into my main argument that magicians take an active control over the audiences perceptions in order to create the right dramaturgical environment for successful magic to take place within. I will examine the features of our perceptual system that allow them to do so in a technical analysis contained in chapter two. Having defined the idea of dramaturgy within magic, in my final chapter I will test these principles via analysis of how several contemporary magicians successfully (or unsuccessfully) apply them to their performances.

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[1] Mark – the target of a performance (or sometimes theft) – usually deliberately chosen by the performer. The term refers to the American carnival practice of using chalk to mark out a punter with lots of money.

[2] An allegorical magician/scholar figure to whom the writings of the Hermetica are attributed. Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy, The Hermetica: The lost wisdom of the Pharaohs, (London: Penguin, 1999)

[3] Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World, (New York: Random House, 1998) 53

[4] I.e. the current war that has been declared on asylum seekers arriving by boat, which frames the debate so as to completely exclude any popular consideration of ‘push factors’ – the why and how of these refugees’ arrival to our shores.

[5] Michael Mangan, Performing Dark Arts: A Cultural History of Conjuring (Bristol: Intellect Books 2007)

[6] Simon During, Modern Enchantments: the Cultural Power of Secular Magic (London: Harvard University Press 2002)

[7] Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, “Attention and awareness in stage magic: turning tricks into research”, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Vol 9: pages 871 - 879