The question refers to whether any coin routine is relevant to the spectators. For what purpose should any spectator pay attention to it let alone remember it? Meaning of course is a very personal thing and is greatly influenced by each spectator's personal experiences. The same effect can have a great meaning for one spectator and none for another. Told or untold questions like "Why do we have to watch this?" or "When could we ever use this?" indicate that the spectators have not, for whatever reasons, acccepted the effect as relevant

Meaning is different from questioning whether it makes sense. Can the spectators understand the effect on the basis of general experience (a problem often met and solved by magicians performing for children.) Does it fit with what the spectators know about how the world works? When a spectator expresses "I don't understand!" it means that several members of the audience are having a problem in making sense of the effect.

Why should we look for effects which both make sense and have meaning for the audiences? Because we learned from neurologists and their study about how the brain works, that information is most likely to get stored if it makes sense and has meaning.

This is confirmed by David A. Sousa in his book How The Brain Learns. David knows the magic community well and at the 2006 FISM lectured about techniques for rehearsing. His point was more magician centered but his writings in books are totally relevant to the performer audience relationship.

How do you make your coin effects to be meaningful AND making sense?

I think that for impromptu performances, keeping a routine reasonably simple, easy to understand, slow enough to appreciate and logical in presentation is vitally important.

A lot of coin routines, in my opinion, are aimed directly at the magicians performing them. Performers get bored of doing the same straight-forward vanishes, penetrations, transpositions.

What we ought to be asking ourselves, is this. Is our own entertainment neccessarily a good gauge of how a one time, first time, only time audience will percieve what we do?

I think not.

So, my approach has always been that "Simple is fine."

It's remarkably easy to boggle a spectator, rather than to entertain them in a meaningful way. Since the audience doesn't know what you are going to do, hasn't seen your effect before, and maybe won't ever see you perform again, there is little need for complicated, multiple coin extravaganzas. Complexity is bad. When the magician starts requiring the casual audience to count, keep track of, or get tied down in all manner of busy happenings, the final impact is almost always mystified confusian.

The most memorable performances tend to be the ones that either have very pretty, elegant but relatively slow moving sleight of hand...and not too much of it!- or, a charismatic performer who is a good storyteller who tends puncuates his entertaining, building performance, which is based on his or her personality, with a few dazzling miracles in just the right places.

My point is, if the audience is important, a very few extremely well-oiled, SIMPLE, elegant coin-chestnuts that the performer has polished to perfection will get a magician a very long ways indeed. A coin guy could own the world, if he had 10 perfect short routines and shorter versions of several of them for instant tricks.

If he did them each well enough, he would need nothing else to entertain the pants off any audience. I suspect that concentrating in this way on being "perfect" with just a handful of clear coin effects is really the best way to serve a magician's audience, and the secret to an audience's appreciation of them is when they can grasp what is happening, and in the entertaining presentation of said simple routine.

I have to agree.
They need to be able to follow the routines and be entertained but what type of meaning is necessary??

Well, the "meaning" or "point" to a magician's performance is similar to the ultimate goal of all art forms. In it's simplist and most basic form, a play, television tv series episode, piece of music, cartoon strip, oil painting, or magical performance is something to entertain and perhaps enlighten the viewer in some way by offering a new, personal perspective to the viewer.

A person can listen to great music, say Mozart, and be entertained and also moved. Great art let's us reflect in a new way some facet of the human condition.

But, it also can just be great entertainment, like, say, the film 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'.

Ultimately a magical routine follows the same principles as all art forms do.

To follow more closely Lawrence O's original question- "Do your effects have meaning", I would venture to say that in order for this to actually happen, for an audience to come away with something meaningful and memorable, we simply need to strive to achieve to be in some manner unique in our expression of magic, in the same way a painter creates something that is only his or hers.

This original, creative impulse along with a good work ethic and lots of sweat and practice, along with a sound understanding of the theory of how sleights are built up into good routines, is the basis of creating meaningful magic that will be remembered.

Being well rehearsed is essential, of course, and it also depends on the audience. If you're out with friends and somebody says, "hey, do some magic," you're not going to go into a somewhat long routine like John Carney's Silver and Glass, great as it is. Something quick and magical along the lines of Marion Boykin's stuff would be more powerful, and then more meaningfull.
But if you're doing a formal show for an audience that is there to see magic, a longer routine would have more meaning, provided you give it some meaning. And that just means a well thought out, rehearsed performance that is fun for everybody.

I hope that makes sense.

For me show the audiece something they have never seen before Esp for(magicians).

Great thread. Giving meaning to your magic is the very definition of being an artist. This is what magic needs to be respected by laymen. Not a guy with a magic coloring book, a hot rod and breakaway wand..

People are interested in anything that involves money.
Vanishing, producing, transforming or multiplying coins is one of the easiest ways to get attention.
They seem to respond to the old silver with a sense of awe.
The effects should be easy to follow by using appropriate pauses.
Something actually happening in their hands gets the biggest reaction.
I try to think of coin magic more as illusions that happen to fit in your pocket.
Hopefully the viewer is imagining this larger and more impossible than it actually is.

I'm not certain that I can speak for spectators in general and what "meaning" they do or should derive from a coin magic performance. I can speak for myself as a spectator however. I personally do not find entertaining routines that require following along or keeping track of any particular thing. I just love watching coins visually appearing and vanishing when and where they should not - by natural laws, anyway. Doesn’t have to be involved at all, doesn’t need to tell me a story. Just watching a well-executed one coin flurry can entertain me to no end! Watching Al Schneider perform his basic Matrix still brings a genuine smile to my face; and it actually still surprises me! Watching the old, grainy video of Al Flosso's Miser's Dream can keep me grinning all night long! Maybe I am just easily pleased by basic coin magic, but it doesn’t need to be a complex script-driven routine to make me happy. Just make it magical!

Keep it very visual, keep it surprising, and don’t drag it out too long and you'll make my day.

Thanks!

Jim

This is the challenge with a lot of magic effects. They often lack a plot or premise for performing the trick. Why are you carrying half dollars or silver dollars to begin with? If you can come up with a premise and then construct a plot your coin magic will improve greatly.

There are several good examples of this idea - just look at Gadabut Coins Revisited by Ron Bauer
It actually has a premise, plot and payoff that is much more entertaining that One in the Hand, Two in the Pocket

Without a plot, a lot of this stuff is just creative juggling...which gets boring after the first 30 seconds

"Without a plot, a lot of this stuff is just creative juggling...which gets boring after the first 30 seconds"

I often feel that we become victims of over-analyzing. In my experience, a lot of audiences just wants to get past the patter, and on to the magic, and I remember reading a column about Al Schneider in his younger days, expressing the same feeling. Showing something impossible without a patter about small invisible men carrying the coins from hand to hand, is still something impossible and magical that is presented right infront of their eyes. I don't know about you, but I still think this "creative jugling" seems to work quite well, and Mickey Silver seems to be able to hold his audiences attention for well over 30 seconds without having a reason for the coins to jump from hand to hand or through his body.

Sorry to be harsh Amakar, I think you have a lot of interesting opinions, but it's not quite fair that you present them as facts.

Amakar, even if I agree with you that it "gets boring after the first 30 seconds", "boring" is not a fact, it's an opinion and Orb is right on this.

However I respectfully disagree with Orb regarding the rest of his post:
Al Schneider has spent a lot of of time in researcch for going away from juggling and closer to "real magic"
Mickey is a friend of mine and he would disagree that he is is doing magical juggling and would even feel insulted for he has done a lot of psychological observations (including concerning the use of feints) to have his effects not being confused with magiccal juggling.

We don't need to be harsh when we disagree but, when we take part in a debate, we should do it being prepared to allow our own thinking to evolve. What pollutes the debate is when we fight for our own opinion to be conclusive.

For instance I would question Hare's apparent conviction about "simple": is it really opposed to clear or progressive and direct? Aren't complex problem easily solved when we succeed taking them small step by small step without skipping any of them?

Lawrence O, I'd like to respond, but I think what you have just said about coin magic, (in reference to my earlier post), has largely blown wildly by my furry-little head. I don't understand at all, heh. Please expand on what you said for me.

Well, Cylinder and Coins is not as simple an effect as Spellbound. This doesn't prevent audiences to perfectly understand the Cylinder and Coins plot. The same could possibly be told about the "complex" Cap And Pence. A one coin routine could be either simple or sophisticated (several effects in one routine like the traditional "transposition" but also "change of nature", "solid through solid", "animation", "multiplication"...). The fact that it may be "sophisticated" (gathering several effects sequentially) doesn't necessarily means that it "aims directly at the magicians performing them" but, in my opinion, rather to the audience.

Etienne knows his Cylinder and Coins for sure. In fact I think it was about this time of the night last December that we closed down a restaurant in Paris discussing the effect!

"The fact that it may be "sophisticated" (gathering several effects sequentially) doesn't necessarily means that it "aims directly at the magicians performing them" but, in my opinion, rather to the audience."

Isn't it fair to say that "gathering several effects sequencially" is simply another way of describing any coin routine?

Perhaps your idea of "simple" and mine are just a bit different?

I'm not suggesting that a magician should go up and perform one vanish, and call it quits. I'm offering the notion that it is a good thing, and sign of genius artistically, to be able to entertain succinctly, to be able to whittle a routine down to it's essense...to not waste words, to not bewilder with complexity when you can enchant and entertain by being comprehensible and- simple and to the point with ones magic.

Etienne thanks for posting this. I've pondered the same thing for quite some time.

I actually went and asked spectators a similar question: "what kind of coin magic do you enjoy watching?" and "what tricks do I do which seem to get under your skin and make you think about them?"

Etienne, I believe that my questioning is, in a way, a paraphrase of your original question.

The answers were interesting: ANY piece of coin magic which involves magic in the spectator's hand, rated the highest. Jay Sankey's Holy Moly, copper/silver transpo, coins across ending in the spectators hand, etc.
I've also been told by spectators that they like visual "eye candy" type of tricks, and do not like tricks which involve excessive talking, or having to keep track of several things at the same time. They also like the tricks to be quick.

In terms of what the tricks mean to the spectators, I'm not sure. They are genuinely amazed/freaked-out, but not sure if my tricks get to them on a deep emotional level. In order for this to happen, perhaps I would need to be in a formal/theatrical setting? I still haven't figured it out.

Good talk,

E.

I found this post by Funsway on another thread here. I feel that it is very relevant to the discussion:

------------"Tim already knows that I feel everything a person does has and should have an AFFECT on other people and yourself in addition to any EFFECT. Magic is no exception. After each performance you should be able to ask, "What did I learn here that will make me a better magician, and a better person tommorrow?" Part of this is absolute confidence that each spectator left with some sense of hope or inspiration as well as any warm-fuzzies from the effect.

This is not theory, but based on tens of thousands of magic performances in which I know people's perspectives were changed -- because they told me so. There are many wasy to communicate something of who you are to another person. Magic is just one of them. NOTE: the refusal to perform a trick on demand can also have a remendous Affect.---------------"

I remember that.

I find that to a great extent the meaning my audiences find in my magic is (merely?) the opportunity to witness something wonderful. I try to cultivate that sense of wonder.

Note that something needn't be profound to be wonderful; there is plenty of wonder in simplicity.

I'd say that my experience mirrors yours in this respect . . .


. . . but not in this respect.

I don't generally go in for quick openers - the Goshman school of thought - and I've never had an audience mention that they wished that they'd seen some magic in the first 30 seconds.

Each of us has our own unique set of experiences.