Posted on Thu 26 May 2016
I spend some time this week asking people in the studio to hold out their four fingers and to think of one. I then attempted to detect which finger they were thinking of by sensing the ideomotor response. My hit rate is about 90%. I'm planning to construct a Fingometer which will aid the detection…
Posted on Thu 26 May 2016
Common coding theory is a cognitive psychology theory describing how perceptual representations (e.g. of things we can see and hear) and motor representations (e.g. of hand actions) are linked. The theory claims that there is a shared representation (a common code) for both perception and action.
Posted on Thu 26 May 2016
IdeoBird will be making an appearence at Science Showoff.
Posted on Thu 26 May 2016
The first protopype of OuijaBird was built this week...OuijaBird - the canary in the mind.An ethereal and elusive creature, you will know her by her song. She detects your Ideomotor Quotient (ImQ), reads your personality, and tells your fortune.OuijaBird can be contacted by one person but she will…
Posted on Thu 26 May 2016
I've been researching birds as magical creatures as part of the development of the character of OuijaBird. Before we developed manned flight birds were strange and magical creatures. They would fly away out of sight to a place we could only imagine. And we imagined many wonderful things. Heavens and…
Posted on Thu 26 May 2016
I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about and discussing pace and timing in magic performance. This comes partly from the struggle I had with the Science Showoff performance because it was only 9-mins and that isn’t enough time for IdeoBird to be explained. Explanation is important in…
Posted on Thu 26 May 2016
People always ask magicians ‘How did you do that’? But if you actually want to know how a trick works, that’s probably the least useful question you could ask.Believe me, the mechanics of magic really are the least interesting bit (unless you’re a slightly obsessive adolescent). Where the…
Posted on Thu 26 May 2016
You want to know how magic works? Firstly, it breaks the rules.Secondly, it does so by using some supernatural force.The trick (ha!) is that the supernatural force changes depending on when and where you live. It could be spirits, psychic powers, or ‘woofledust’ (though if it’s the last, you…
Posted on Thu 26 May 2016
On the 12th and 13th November we're running the world's first magic hack and looking for a small number of magicians to join us!
