Wednesday, 28 November 2012

Inventing The Impossible

I have previously posted about Marco Tempest and his inclusion of modern technology in his magic performances. In the video below he give a little insight into his philosophy on creating magic effects and how they cross over with technology.
To start it off he reminds us of Arthur C Clarke's third law:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
And goes on to describe how people like Robert Houdin and others also tread this line in the golden age of magic.
Magic is a unique tool for previsualizing the future. Magicians show their audiences what it would be like to fly, read minds, have super powers, teleport, disappear and reappear. Magicians are prototyping the future every day.
Marco Tempest


The final illusion he performs is picked straight out of David Brin's latest book Existence. Glasses that can be worn and that shows you a digitally enhanced world. It gives you a map overlay, a yellow brick road, if you will, leading you straight to where you are going or even telling you who the people are that passes you. This is a technology which is currently being developed by google, (check a teaser here) but with magic we can see glimpses of the future now. It might still be crude, but so was the first brick sized mobile phone i had in 1994.

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