Ye Olde Magick Blogge

A very neat twist. I was curious about this routine the moment I first read Darwin Ortiz’s thoughts on it in Strong Magic. He made the point that while many magicians thought the use of ball bearings was to turn it into a “magician fooler”, he believed that this criteria had an impact upon the way normal folk would perceive the routine as well. Not having performed it, I don’t know either way, but given how many people consider the importance of the sleeves being rolled up, I can imagine it somewhat.

It’s almost a case of extreme negative illusion. To summarize briefly, Wesley James put forward the idea of a positive illusion (“It really looks like he’s doing X!”) and a negative illusion (“It doesn’t look like he could be doing anything else BUT X!”). Quickly, despite the names, they’re both good aspects to have in any illusion, and while they sound almost identical, they’re not. It’s the difference between a retention of vision vanish (“I swear it looks like the coin is going into the hand!”) versus a FT-based vanish with a Ramsay Subtlety (“I swear the other hand is empty, so it must be going in the hand!”). Ideally they’re not thinking that literally, but if they are, sometimes it’s good to mix it up a little.

Anyways, in Gertner’s case, I think there’s an undercurrent of negative illusion going on — “Surely if there was a metallic ball in his hands, or if was there all along, we’d hear it knock against the cups, wouldn’t we? We hear nothing, so it must be getting there by magic.” The complete absence of sound where there should be sound can theoretically make for a compelling argument for magic. It might even conceivably be one of those rare magic routines that could play well for blind people…?