Two Early-Stage Ideas

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Here are a couple routines I will be trying out over the holidays. The ideas are still in the early stages. But there’s no reason these shouldn’t be workable.

First is a variation on my trick The Look of Love, which I wrote about here and here.

Instead of the patter used in that trick, I’m going to tell about my friend who is a painter and who likes to have his paintings named via the intuition of a stranger. (Or something like that.)

Then I’m going to have the person for whom I’m performing blindly come up with a name for the most recent painting he worked on by combining a noun with a visual adjective.

Then I’m going to text my “painter friend” to see if he accepts this name for his new work

His reply is going to say something like, “I think that’s the perfect name. Check out the photo I gave you.” Then I’ll take an envelope from my wallet, tear it open, and remove a photo of a painting where the chosen name seems to fit incredibly well.

To do this, I’ll be using the same basic method as The Look of Love. But to create the image I’ll be using an app called WOMBO Dream. This is an app that uses AI to create artwork based on a title you suggest.

Unlike the AI writing rabbit-hole I fell into earlier this year on this site, AI created paintings are bad in a way that aren’t too distinguishable from real art.

I will either use a wingman to help with this trick, or, during the course of “texting” my painter friend, I’ll create the picture (takes 5-10 seconds). Download it and crop out the “Dream” branding. Then print it in preparation for the wallet load. It sounds like a lot, and maybe it will feel that way. If so, I’ll get a buddy to help me out, so I can do it without going on the phone at all.

Sometimes you have to do a little work to see that the artwork works well with the title. It’s not completely obvious every time. But I don’t think that’s a negative.

Here is some of the artwork created by the app, based on some noun and adjective titles.

Green Volleyball

Tall Blender

Golden Monkey

Another thing I plan on testing is a trick using this tactile illusion as the jumping off point. (Thanks to JM for tipping me off to this)

I will start with the illusion part, which I think will be pretty interesting on its own. And then I will take it a step further with a more impossible conclusion.

So this illusion creates a connection between this slime hand and their actual hand. I will follow that up with some version of ashes on palm. I will tell them that now that their mind is “primed for a connection” between a fake hand and their real hand, we can manifest some more intense phenomena. Cigarette goes under the slime hand. “Do you feel the heat?” Blah, blah. Turn the slime over, showing the ashes underneath. Then reveal the ashes on their own hand.

Sometime in the new year I’ll let you know how these turned out.