Jerx Christmas - Seth Raphael - 1:49 AM
/The party is really getting going now. Some of the amateurs have crashed. But the real partiers are just getting started.
Oh look, here comes Seth Raphael.
And he’s got a glass of punch for me. Thank you kind sir. Haha, good times. Seth is consistently doing some of the most interesting magic, and I’m always interested to see what he’s working on.
Holy shit. I just got super tired. Oh my god. Where did this comeafarommmmmmm…….
Hey guys… it’s me, Seth Raphael. I slipped something in Andy’s drink to make him pass out so I can take over the blog for a little bit. There’s something I want to write you about…
Indirection: the missing principle.
I think I’ve identified an almost universal principle in magic that I am calling indirection. This is my first time trying to formalize it, so take it as a starting point. (If you’re just here for the free magic trick, skip to the end.)
Indirection can be used to create prediction effects, or mind reading effects. It underlies countless forces, and can be combined with existing effects to make them even more impossible.
Let’s start with a super simple (and non-fooling) example. I have a penny and a dime in my hand, and ask you to pick one. I then open my prediction which reads “you will pick the bigger coin.” If you picked the dime, it’s “bigger” in terms of value. If you pick the penny, it’s “bigger in terms of size.
A direct prediction would be explicit, an indirect prediction has the ability to be changed or reinterpreted after the fact.
In equivoque, the indirection happens in the spectator’s choice. A direct choice would be “choose a suit” whereas the indirect choice is “pick up the red cards or the black cards.” That choice is indirect because it can be reframed as “those are the cards you chose” or “those are the cards you chose to throw away.”
Indirection is the fundamental idea behind many techniques, beyond equivoque, quinta, and maybe by the end of this essay you will agree it’s the fundamental mechanism behind switching envelopes, swami gimmicks, and even some super-high tech magic.
Let’s start with the humble Hot Rod. A direct choice would be to ask a spectator, “which color would you like?” Obviously, with an ordinary Hot Rod, this would only work 1 out of 6 times.
So we take the direct choice of choosing a color, and replace it with the indirect choice of choosing a number. This layer of abstraction, or indirection, allows the magician to be sneaky and shift a free choice into a non-free choice.
We’ve created a layer of translation that is under the complete control of the magician.
Let’s take another example, the Hoy Book Test. In this classic book test, the spectator needs to choose a page number. If you were to ask them to “name a page number” that would be direct, and there is no wiggle room for funny business. So instead, we add a layer of abstraction: “say stop as I’m flipping through this book.” When they say stop, the magician can simply lie and say “it’s page 37” and then proceed with the trick.
Hoy’s clever dodge is somewhat more subtle than the Hot Rod force; here we’ve created a translation step where the spectator uses the word “stop” and we can translate that into the number we want to force.
For the Hot Rod, Hoy Book Test, and equivoque, we’re using indirection to force the audience to a conclusion we want, but we can also use it in reverse. We can create an indirect prediction, allow a free choice, and then use a translation to show that the prediction matches their genuine free choice. Any trick in which you switch out an existing prediction before revealing it (using a double lift, a Mexican Turnover, an index, or your favorite method) would fall into this category.
That’s a technique I used to create the prediction phase in Amaze (Jerx Best Trick of the Year). In Amaze the spectator has a free choice of a hundred different mazes with different titles. They have a genuinely free choice. I have a way to secretly know which maze they chose, but I wanted to be able to predict the maze they would choose, by handing them a prediction before the effect started. So I used indirection. Every maze in the maze book has the same page number: 26.
After they freely choose a maze, I can reveal it verbally, and because of an indirect prediction, I can show them my prediction “I believe you will solve puzzle #26.” Because I control the translation of number to title (I made the maze book) I can make it seem as if I knew which maze they would choose BEFORE they even chose it.
It’s subtle, but the fact that I can “translate” the #26 to the title of the maze they chose helps prove that I knew the title of the maze they would choose, which is stronger than just the number of the puzzle they would choose.
Indirection can have some presentational challenges (see how Andy has improved the Hot Rod indirection), but if ironed out it can add another layer of impossibility.
Hopefully these examples make clear what I mean by indirection. I have a feeling the concept is even more generalizable. The examples above use an abstract layer of indirection. A multiple out envelope has many of the same properties: is it a physical indirection? Is a Kennedy switching box a covert indirection? When you are performing Picasso by ProMystic, and telling the spectator which part of the body to color, is that a real-time in-the-moment indirection?
While indirection can add another layer of impossibility to an effect, it can also provide procedural embellishment. Hoy being a perfect example. The random ‘selection’ of a page number, over time can become interwoven with the memory of them opening the book you don’t touch to that specific page. Indirection can sometimes encourage or help to create a false memory of what really happened.
Indirection can leave breathing room or space for your audience's internal interpretation of what did or did not happen. Comparatively direct choice does not always allow the same potential benefits.
FREE GIFT
Here’s another example of an ambiguous prediction that uses indirection to become possible. At the start of the evening, you say “I’ve got this song stuck in my head, but I can’t remember the name of it…” and you hum the melody. You do this several more times over the course of the evening. You finally ask your spectator for help: “when I hum that song, who is the first person it makes you think of?” When they say “My cousin Tom” you blurt out “THANK YOU! THAT’S IT!” you pull out your phone and play the song you’ve been humming all night: The Tom Song.
In this case, we control the translation from tune to name, because some dude sang EVERY NAME to that tune. So you search on YouTube for “The Tom Song” or “The Sarah Song” and hit play.
The melody is the indirect prediction. Though it seems concrete, how could the melody of the song be fuzzy, the secret lies in that the same melody maps to thousands of songs, and you don’t cement which one until you reveal it by finding the song on YouTube.
Seth is releasing his best iPhone secret. Finally.
15 years ago I invented a peek to see what is on your spectator’s phone screen. It’s a peek I’ve kept to myself. I recently discovered a way to instantly unlock a spectator’s phone right under their nose without them knowing.
I’ve put them together in a one two punch that enables infinite presentations, and deep astonishment.
Do a drawing duplication of their favorite memory. Order them the thing they want from Amazon. Divine any word they look up on Wikipedia.
(Did I mention you unlock their phone too? Without using a calculator, without an app, no peeks.)
The spectator reacts by looking at you as if you can see into their soul, then down at their phone, then back at you. You wink at them and smile. They have a memory to last a lifetime.
Brilliant and simple - the best type of technique! - Colin Cloud
Available for a limited time only. Working pros find the methodology to be elegant, fun, and “why didn’t I think of that?”
Okay… it looks like Andy’s waking up now. Thanks for listening. Catch you later.