Preserving The Art Of Magic.

Please Read:
I start by informing readers what I will be talking about. This is not an essay but just some of my thoughts about magic that I would like to share. I do not in any case ask for your agreement or disagreement even if I happen to mention the question in the writing. Moderators please delete the thread if it seem inappropriate in any form.

I urge everyone who will reply to this thread to put down some of your thoughts as well, about what you will be reading and avoid quoting/replying if you disagree or agree. It often leads to debate than expressing views. Lastly, please be ON TOPIC.



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I seem to realise recently that Magic has been the kind of "IN" thing for some youngsters. It could be due to influences from Variety Shows or other reasons I may not be aware of. Even the Chingay have included magic performances and The Big Brother Variety Show has stuck with magic being their main event of the show and the Golden Horse Award invited Marco Tempest as performer for the event. Not forgetting Lu Chen has performed for the CNY programmes in China which caused a stir.


I think that we may have commercialise Magic or brought Magic to too many people. Our art seem to be changing into a form of business or mystery. In case you don't realise, after Lu Chen performed in China, he changed the view of magic to the Chinese people there. Not only so, he got people into magic as well and people no longer think magic is just some sort of stage act with strange props.

On the bad side, after he performed, many posted exposure videos and their solutions to of how his tricks were performed. I watched Lu Chen's china interviews and on one of them, he was presented with a chart by a spectator with drawings and explanations on how his trick might be performed. I thought it was rather insulting on TV especially. I cannot find any comparison to show how it may seem insulting perhaps due to our distinctive form of art. People actually were more of figuring out how he does it than enjoy it. It could lead to future magicians or future hecklers equipped with magic secrets.


This is just an example how magic is too popularise I suppose. I thought maybe we should just keep it to minimal instead of showing it to the whole world and letting half of them turn into magicians and the other half figuring out or getting secrets for the sake of knowing.

When everyone knows, it is not a secret anymore
Isn't it what our magic is partly based on? Secrets.

A few days back, I was at someplace which I shall not disclose. There I saw people trying to sell magic openly to laypeople. For you information, they set up a booth. They have every human rights to do but I am sure as students of magic themselves, they are ashamed of themselves and a disgrace to the magicians community. They are literally selling secrets to laypeople and of course secrets that other magicians rely on to make a living by performing. (I believe every performer of magic loves magic and therefore would make performing their job so they do what they like for a living)

Someone of them demo effects to laypeople and get them to buy. Of course you may say laypeople would never buy because it is expensive to them and of no interest. However, you may not know if 1 out of 10 may do so. And the other 9 out of 10? I am pretty sure some will change their views about magic the next time they see a performance, "Hey that trick I see before, if I buy $20 only, I can also do."

Or how about the laypeople could ask the magician, "Eh where got sell that trick? Very cool leh."
I am sure the magician will be more surprised than the spectator.



If you do not get what I mean, I am simply thinking that magic may die out. I do not wish to see magic being commercialise anymore and dealers trying to just rip beginners' money by abusing the secrets. I hope piracy is reduced as well. Think about it, after you support piracy of magic, you become a magician and you see others turning to piracy for magic, I am pretty sure you will hate the people. If you don't, you either don't love magic or you know that you were just like them how ironic. If you support piracy, it gets back to you.

You may not have enough money to buy an effect or material you want but there are free beginner materials you can try out. If you then love magic you will never support piracy of magic for more advanced stuff. It is like you love your girlfriend/boyfriend and will not find another girl/guy to marry for marrying the other one you don't love is cheaper.


To students of magic:
If you love magic, take good care of it. If you don't, do not abuse it.

To laypeople:
Our art is to entertain you by bringing you something you could not experience everyday. If you love it, enjoy. If you don't, leave it alone. We never force magic on you.



I LOVE MAGIC!

Yes. It feels this way several years ago, with the advent of street magic at kovan and probably now because of media.

Its probably going to be the same in the future. And sometimes, I feel disgusted at the way things are. And well, one way is to improve ourselves, or, simply shut yourself out.

Thanks for your thoughts Han Xiang, we need more people who love magic and not simply doing magic to show off and to know how secrets are.


Sighssssssssssssssssssss

Hm...this is a very interesting topic for me. However, I think that magicians (i dont claim to be one <_< ) should not view this as a form of depression, but should instead be MOTIVATED to create even more explosive tricks and keep the secret well locked up. Lots of popular magicians have signature tricks which they perform again and again. Why? Because they never reveal it to anyone. And why do people want them to perform again? Because it is new and creative.



BUT, i still condemn those no-gooders whom sell out tricks like that. Its like giving a layperson a recipe to a famous dish. :(


Well, magicians will still continue to live on, if their brain juice are still ticking and their passion for magic never die. As the saying goes "逆水行舟 不进则退" :lol:

Yea. If it really continues to go on. And the WHOLE WORLD will know magic. Its not gonna be fun anymore.My opinion is that the sellers shouldn't be this way to try to make money.):

Just an add-in of some of my thoughts here:

Much could be said the same for any other forms of art. Talk to dancers who are serious about dancing and they would be very offended by people who just pick dance because it is 'in', and drop it after a while.

What complicates things for Magic is that part of the crux of magic lies with secrets. Yet, have you seen Pendragon performing Linking Rings before? It astounds, mystifies still, and entertains. How many of the audience know the secret of Linking Rings? More than half of them. (In fact, he asks them right before performance if they have seen it exposed by 'the masked guy'.) Does it say something about magic being more than just secrets? I believe it does.

In my general opinion, it is great that magic is being brought into the general mainstream and being accepted as mainstream entertainment. I'm glad this has happened because it generally elevates the level of magic.

Exposure is a by-product of that, and while it is to be condemned, i say the best thing to do is to focus on doing better, rather than to spend time criticising and complaining about it. Exposure will not stop, however much we wish that we can do something about it. Of course on our own part, absolutely, we should NOT support piracy and we should support only originals.

There's much argument about magic being available to laypeople too readily, and that i will not touch upon, for i believe that's a whole new few paragraph that i would have to write.

In short, if you love your art, do what you can to protect it, further it, and stand by it.

Sometimes I do find it a bit pretensious on our part to talk about "protecting and preserving" the art only AFTER we learned all the secrets. Don't get me wrong... I am not pointing fingers at anybody because the above statement applies to me as well.

I actually learned my first few tricks from that particular shop in Kovan, and I honestly can't say I wasn't thrilled at finding such a place. It actually helped me to realize my childhood dream of learning magic.

Yes, old-timers would tell us that they all learned it through the hard ways (eg: books, manuscripts, perhaps even a personal mentor) but I suspect, if given a choice, most of them would have wished things were more available for them like today.

Those were the good old days where technology wasn't that advanced and magic secrets were kept to a privileged few. Exposure was kept to a minimum, magicians were like demi-gods.... and mere mortals like me had to content with just learning The 21 Card Trick.

I am not sure how you guys started... but if it wasn't for shops and DVDs, probably many of us wouldn't be here discussing on this subject.

Also, magicians need to make a living too. There are only few ways to do that:

- performing
- selling effects (through DVDs or manscripts)
- teaching other magicians (in lectures or conventions)
- write books on magic (theories or techniques)

besides the first case, there is really no way we can tell them, "hey, can you stop teaching or writing books... laypeople can buy them and learn our art!!" Probably Paul Harris would have starved to death.

There will always be people who would put up "tutorials" and half-baked effects online, there will always be people who would teach for financial gains, there will always be people who want to learn the secrets but yet not putting in the effort to master and there will always be people who wants to expose everything behind magic for some presumptous reasons. We really cannot stop everyone.

The only way to counter such a problem is through right education. Educate those young and budding magicians on the right attitude towards magic and not kill the goose that lay the golden eggs, so to speak.

I think, humbly, SMC is doing it's fair bit in this way.

Everyone has the rights to learn, you can't stop them. However it takes us (magician) to educate them about the code of ethics, this is the most efffective way to stop exposures and preserve the secrets/art.

Anyone might know all the secrets but can he/she make that trick look beautiful or magical? That's the reason why we are call - magician.

Forget about fighting with other forums, focus on how you can uphold the arts. It will set you aside as a professional rather than just a hobblist - and people listen to professionals...

Why are we so caught up with this non-existent fear that "the whole world will know magic and so nothing will fool them anymore"?

It won't. Magic will preserve itself.

Even though secrets may be revealed online, or by the s*c*et a*ter*sk* we put while trying to get our point across, the so-called world at large will not bother.

When bad magic appears, good magic will go into hiding. There is no worry at all. Just continue practicing and perfecting what we should and what we have and stop buying "new" crap (I reckon that *h*t is a better word here, but it does not sound good on a forum.) whenever it appears on *h**ry11, ell**i*nist or *a*and**v*, we should still be able to mystify tons and tons of audiences with what magic should be.

Kenneth