Would you want to be sat upon?

BrianMillerMagic · Would you want to be sat upon?

"To be sat upon is a really cool thing...for a chair." -Dr. Michael Koch

This statement, while amusing, actually has some interesting implications for thinking about the way we approach effects and specifically the props we use to present magic.

Let's see if a discussion can get rolling about what you guys think this means - if you get stuck I'll throw some hints in!

~Brian

Michael Kras

I think the quote relates to magic in a manner that hints to us that a lot of magicians nowadays are relying merely on their props to create magic, completely neglecting presentation, patter, a logical premise, or a hook.... there's no reason why the magic is happening, it just does. Not only do the aforementioned factors make the magic more entertaining, but also more powerful and engaging as a whole.

Liam

Hmm mike... dont really see what that has to do with the quote

hmmm.... "To be sat upon is a really cool thing...for a chair."
what i take from it is that we have to entertain whoever is watching. There for if i was entertaining a chair i would sit on it. But if am entertaining kids and i sat on them i would probably end up with a lawsuit on my hands.
So as a magician i have to make sure that what i'm doing is "a really cool thing" for whoever i may be entertaining. And everyone isnt chairs that like being sat on. To go further with the metaphor, some people you present to might be floors that like being stood on, fridges that like being eaten out of, or beds that want to lay down with you..... So we have to change our presentations and sometimes effects to go with who we are presenting to.
Like yesterday i had to give a show for the japanese exchange students who didnt speak a word of english. If i had done my normal routine it would have been like.... sitting in a fridge. So i need to either change from sitting to eating, or change them from a fridge to a chair.

Lets try to sum up all of these rambles into a phrase

The quote "To be sat upon is a really cool thing...for a chair." is relevant to magic in the way that you need to adapt your performance for whom you are performing.

BrianMillerMagic

Liam is definitely getting closer to what I was originally getting at. He's on target regarding "adapting to different audiences," except that I wasn't trying to go at anything about different audiences. Michael's response is on target regarding it being about the props we use, but not quite what I was going for. If you combine Michael's theme about props and Liam's theme about adapting to different situations, we're getting hot! Keep it up guys.

EDIT: Liam's response is actually really interesting as I read it again. Not what I was going for, but definitely equally as applicable to the quote and an interesting discussion in and of itself.

Michael Kras

I think, in a nutshell, it relates to magic in saying that magicians, while remaining consistent in personality and character, must adapt their performance styles, patter, and even effects so they play to different audiences. They must be changed in such a way that, when a general magic attitude is presented towards a specific type of crowd, they are thoroughly entertained and even amazed. It gives me great pleasure to take a single effect and work on as much as four different handlings of it to play to different age groups.

As an example, a recent addition to my reperoite... Gary Darwin's salt routine (a nice 5 minute salt routine, similar to the Passe Passe Salt from Tarbell Volume One). In it, salt poured from a salt cellar into your loosely closed fist is caused to completely vanish and reappear. In a faux explanation, the magician demonstrates how he shot the salt up his sleeve while misdirecting spectators. However, this time the salt accidentally goes all the way up his sleeve, across his body, and down the other sleeve. This becomes apparent when the magician suddenly pours that very same salt out of the opposite hand! It's a wonderful routine.

For children's audiences. I do not include the faux explanation.... I simply really really milk the vanishing and reappearance of the salt. For adults, I perform the routine described above in a similar manner, with lots of comedy. For teenaged audiences, it takes a completely different turn. not only does it shorten to about 2 minutes of magic (teenage attention span, naturally), but it's also much edgier. In this routine the salt doesn't vanish, it is openly snorted by the magician... this is, of course, played for laughs. I then, after a bit of in-between comedy time, I then proceed to sneeze all the salt back out into my cupped hand. Then, I tell them it was all an illusion after all and I proceed with a modified faux explanation.

Ethan the Emazing

I think it means we should "adapt" our effects to the audience. To not play down on them and to make it understandable.

BrianMillerMagic

So here's what I was getting at:

We ought to put more consideration what we do with the objects we perform with. Objects have properties and uses that people are mostly aware of, at least intuitively. There are so many instances of magicians using objects to a purpose that simply doesn't make sense. People would think nothing to see someone sit on a chair because chairs are designed to be sat on. If one were to see someone sit on a television, however, there would be something suspicious about it that would require some investigation.

A common example is when a coin magician makes a coin disappear by wrapping it in flash paper and burning it. Sure, fire is a flashy thing that captivates people in a single moment. But when people reflect on the coin disappearing later, wouldn't they have to at least wonder why the coin had to be wrapped and then disappear in a flame? The illogical use of fire invites people to investigate something that they shouldn't be thinking about.

By the same token, fire can be used with a coin to great effect, such as Jay Sankey's In a Flash. That is a use of fire that makes sense - the fire burned through the deck. The magic (and their question later) then is how it stopped with the coin at their card, which is fine.

So we ought to be putting some serious consideration into the inherent properties of the objects we use in order to avoid unnecessary investigation by our audiences.