Emergence Idea

MH Writes:

I’m sure you’ve seen Vanishing’s new coin in glass. I have one headed my way, but I think this could have some fun uses if it was set up in another room similar to your haunted deck presentation.

Absolutely.

Imagine it like this…

You do a couple weak phases of coin to glass. The version where your hand is clawed over the top of the glass in a way that you would only hold it if you wanted to drop something from your palm into the glass.

This version of the trick has never fooled anyone because when faced with the question, “Is he transporting matter from one location to the other? Or is he dropping a coin from his hand that’s holding the glass in that weird way?” I’ve found that spectators usually choose the option that doesn’t require them to disturb their understanding of the laws of physics.

One structure I like to use frequently is to do a shitty version of a trick, then bemoan the fact that nobody really believes I have this power I’m demonstrating, and then do an impossible version of the trick.

So after doing the garbage version of coins to glass I’d say how much it bothered me that people don’t really believe I can translocate coins through the power of my mind. “Why are they so skeptical?”

Yes, I’m just being dramatic, and they know I’m just being silly, but it actually gives the trick a fairly decent meta-story. Instead of just, “I can make coins go to a glass,” which is like… okay, so what? The “story” becomes: “I can do this impossible thing, but no one believes me. So now I’ve come up with a way to demonstrate it that proves I can do it.” Because that’s a story about you as a human, not just a coin and a glass.

And I’m saying it doesn’t matter how jokey and over-the-top you play it, that “story” still works on people. They’re not going to think the story is “real,” but they’ll still find a way to make it relatable to them, because that’s what we do as humans.

So now you perform your “test conditions” version.

The glass is placed in a separate room.

You have them confirm no one else is in the room and the window is locked.

You set-up your friend’s phone so it records a close-up of the glass (and not, of course, the deck of cards nearby).

You have them confirm the glass is empty before you leave the room and close the door.

Outside in the hall, you make a coin disappear.

“Listen,” you say, and encourage them to put their ear up to the door.

Faintly, they hear a clinking rattle in the glass.

They can immediately enter the room and see the coin is now in the glass. Everything else is the same. You don’t have to touch anything. They pick up the glass and retrieve their coin.

They take their phone and watch back the video, and they have something close to irrefutable proof of a coin materializing and falling into an empty glass.

That would be super strong.

[The only potential issue I can think of is that the gimmick that shoots the coin makes a little noise. In real life, it’s probably not noticeable. But on a video they can replay over and over again, it might be. I’d have to hear it in real life to know. I wouldn’t be too worried about it because you can probably either mask the sound with some other ambient noise. Or recontextualize the noise as the sound of a coin “blipping” into existence. Again, I’d have to hear it to know exactly how much of an issue it is. But it’s not the sort of thing that would prevent me from buying it.]