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!
Posted on Thu 26 May 2016
Open source magic is turning out to be a little more challenging than I first thought.In preparing for our magic ‘hack’, I've made a number of personal and broadcast invitations to magicians. How people have responded has told me a lot about how challenging it is to bring a maker culture and…
Posted on Thu 26 May 2016
We recently ran the world’s first magic hack, bringing together magicians and technologists for 2 days to develop new ideas. I’ll be frank, we had no idea if it was going to work.
Posted on Thu 26 May 2016
Part of my ongoing research and interests are about unravelling the mysteries of why music has such a profound affect on the brain and memory and why our appreciation for music stays intact to the very end of our lives. How can playing particular songs to people with dementia evoke such strong…
