There are many routines in magic that involve the repetition of one effect.
The ambitious card, oil and water, two in the hands - one in the pocket, the opening phase of cups and balls routines where several balls vanish in sequence, and four ace routines all are a case in point.

Here are some considerations which are worth discussing, I think.


A) Altering technique as one repeats an effect

General wisdom has it that one should alter the technique as one repeats an effect within a routine. Usually it is stated that one should do so in order to block several possible explanations.

For example, in a cups and balls routine, one may vanish the first ball using a f#k# tran#f##, while using different ste##s for the following balls. Should a spectator have suspected strategy 1 after seeing ball 1 disappear, he will be convinced that he was wrong after seeing vanish 2.

Question(s) and discussion: Is this piece of theoretical wisdom really sound? Does this rationale for altering technique not presuppose that spectators form rather correct suspicions about which technique is employed in each phase?
Getting back to the earlier example: I think that ste##s and f#k# tran#f##s are exactly what a spectator suspects the secret may be when he/she watches a vanishing sequence of a cups and balls routine.
Now I see two possibilities:
Either your technique is perfect to the point that a f#k# tran#f## or a ste## cannot be detected even by a spectator who is looking FOR them (in order to confirm his/her suspicion). That is, your handling induces belief that you (only) did what you appeared to do and the spectator - even when his suspicion is correct - will think 'no, that can't be it'. But then, it is a mystery how altering your technique can help in blocking certain explanations.
Or your technique is not as perfect. That is, if the spectator is looking for the technique you do indeed employ at that point, he will find his or her suspicion confirmed. If this is the case, than vanish 1 may very well leave the spectator with the suspicion that you employ a certain technique and when he now watches for you to employ the same technique again, he will find his suspicion disconfirmed by your alteration of the technique. But is it really desirable to induce a (correct) suspicion that a certain technique is employed by executing that technique imperfectly?
So we are stuck with two alternatives: A desirable situation which, however, renders altering the technique utterly useless. Or an undesirable situation in which altering the technique may be helpful.
Conclusion: There is no desirable situation in which altering the technique is of any use in performing a routine that involves repeating a certain effect.


B) Magic as background noise

Watching René Lavand perform sparked off the following considerations. I am sure there are other examples in other performing magicians' repertoires.
René Lavand uses repeated effects to, well, great effect in several of his routines. Two examples that spring to my mind are 'The Three Breadcrumbs' and 'The Greek'.
I noticed that in performing these effects, René Lavand very much downplays the importance of each individual of the repeated effects (a bit more so in the 'Breadcrumbs'). Rather, after having proven the possibility of a phenomenon (a breadcrumb travelling back to a cup, cards being painted), Lavand shifts the focus to the stories that go with the trick. The repetion of the effect (and I do not really thinks he cares how often he repeats the travel of the breadcrumb) becomes secondary and the magic becomes some kind of background noise to the story that is told. As is shown by the 'Breadcrumbs', this does not preclude sophisticated interaction between what is told and what happens - when the poem recited by Lavand finally summarizes the trick, the trick takes a turn that fails to be captured by the text.

I think there is a general lesson to be learned here: Magic is (hopefully) intellectually challenging. However, to much intellectual challenge (of the same kind) will, over time, be a bit cumbersome to spectators. Repetition in a routine can be used as an opportunity to shift the focus to things that appeal in a different way and thus, perhaps surprisingly, repetition is an opportunity to create variety in one's performance.


C) Repetition and Challenge

Repeating an effect within a routine may be challenging to spectators. It may affect the magician-audience interaction in an unhealthy way. Spectators might interpret the repetition as telling them 'See, I can do that several times and you still cannot catch me'.
I think that the strategy listed under B) above might actually be a good way to prevent repetition from affecting the relationship with your audience in a negative way.

But of course it is an open question whether one really should not challenge one's audiences. While challenging presentations have attracted a lot of criticism in recent years (see for example the 'Books of Wonder'), succesful challenging may actually be considered, by some, as an excellent way to boost the impact of their performances. Surely, there is nothing more satisfying than repeating an effect without the spectators being able to figure out the method. If repetition and challenge are connected in the way suggested above, repetition might be a vital tool to achieve greater impact with one's performances.


D) Repetition is Boring

Magic is about suspense. Routines incorporating the repetition of an effect are paradigm cases of boring magic.

I hope you'll find something in here that encourages discussion...

Disclaimer: I do not underwrite all of the above arguments.

Cheers, Tilman

This is a great argument howeve I still think there is something to be said for magic where you tell them you are going to do it and then Poof....it hapens...

Most magic exists in a context that it is only magic because they don't know what is going to happen. People over come that with clever patter and sometimes music.

Come on - 45 views and just one reply... I am really interested in your reactions (should write shorter posts, though, in the future).

FWIW, I think your post is very interesting but I don't have the experience to make any significant comment on the points you raise. I am curious to see what other people might have to say, though.

Point 'A' I find especially interesting. I'll think about it (my initial feeling would be that the effectiveness of repeated moves should have a lot to do with how the routine is structured, and could only be analysed on a case by case basis; if the new moves are justified--that is, if you use a different vanish every time because your hands are in the right position for that move to look natural--then I don't think it should lead people to belive that the last move must have been "suspicious").

-Travis

Themes, tag-lines, running gags...

An excellent example of such moves 'built in' could be the much posted about 'Outsmokin' by Ron Jaxon. One of those ingenious routines that counts on the repetition not only causing a 'dawning' on the spectator but further confusion at the same time.

Doug

Tilman wrote:
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"Come on - 45 views and just one reply... I am really interested in your reactions (should write shorter posts, though, in the future)."
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You repeated your arguments on repetition on another thread and pointed everyone to this one. So here is my response from that other thread here as well, and don't worry, it is even longer than yours :



If a spectator sees an effect, but has no idea how it is done, he is forced from deductive logic to inductive logic--he has to use his imagination to create a possible explanation for the trick. There may be several possible solutions.

Repetitions of the effect can be used to shut down each of the possible solutions.

In the ambitious card, for example, the spectator watches once and thinks, "Maybe he didn't really put the card in the middle of the deck." This may or may not be true. On the next repetition he looks to see if it might be true.

If the magician were somehow to know what the spectator was thinking, he could construct a second demonstration in which it is clear that the card does go in the middle of the deck.

If the magician is really smart, he constructs a routine that suggests each possibility as he proceeds, and each repetition disproves the method suggested by the preceding one.

Eventually the spectator comes to the conclusion that none of those methods can be right, when in effect all of them were.

The spectator makes the false asssumption that since the effect is the same, the method must be the same each time. In looking for "the method" he becomes lost among the trees and can't find the forest.

The spectator is fooled by his inability to perceive that the magician was way ahead of him and predicting or suggesting his logical inferences as they came up, and then knocking them down each time with a method that disproved rather than supported the obvious solution.

Effects that "are built on repetition" are exactly that. The cumulative power of the effect is constructed on several repetitions that each disprove all the possible explanations. The result is the impression of total impossibility. The linking rings, cups and balls, ambitious card, coins through table, matrix assemblies, and many other magic tricks are based on this strategy of repetition.

Spectators think more deeply and more accurately than most magicians assume. Even if they do their thinking at a level below conscious analysis, they are analyzing many possible solutions. This "intuition" is actually a quick assessment of possibilities and a quick result--"Something fishy here." One of the jobs of the performer is to make those subconscious thoughts conscious so they can be picked apart and answered by the magician's argument.

That is why controlling the spectator's thinking, getting agreement to each stage of the magician's valid but false argument, and answering objections before they arise are all so important to closing the lid on the spectator's ability to offer any kind of solution.

Con men and salesmen know how to do this type of manipulation. "Ah, but you must be thinking that quality of this type must be very expensive..."

A good magician does the audience's thinking for them, taking over their reasoning process and driving them into the conundrum "There is no such thing as magic/There is no other explanation."

A short change artist does exactly this type of thing. The busy and harried checkout clerk is confused by the con man's requests, and has trouble with the arithmetic involved. The people in line behind are getting fed up (one may be a shill intending to apply this pressure) and the clerk doesn't want to look stupid. At this point the con artist takes over and does the arithmetic for the clerk: "Look, heres the ten, the five and the five ones, that's twenty, just give me back my twenty dollar bill and we're all even." Gratefully, the clerk hands over the twenty, and ends up short five without knowing it.

Magic is the same thing. You get the audience to follow your line of reasoning and get them to agree to each step of the argument including the false one-- "I'll put the coin into my left hand." When the conclusion of the argument turns out to be nonsense, the spectator is left with no way to recover. Because he agreed to every premise of a valid argument, or accepted and agreed to an invalid argument in which necessary premises were missing.

Effects of repetition, or repeating effects at a later time with a different method, are two very powerful ways of constructing a magical argument. I think that they are among the most effective and give the most long lasting impression of magic.

If you wave your hand over the deck of cards, and the face of the card changes, and you do not show the waving hand empty immediately, the audience's first assumption is that you stole the card somehow off the face of the deck and palmed it in the waving hand. That is what they will look for if you do the trick again.

The second time, you can change the card and immediately show your waving hand completely empty--disproving the solution they were looking for.

If you do it a third time, the spectators will now be looking to see if you palmed a card in your moving hand and dropped it on the face up deck.

This time you show your hand empty before the change, wave it over the cards in the left hand revealing the color change, and then immediately produce a fan of cards from your left elbow, and show that the face up deck in your left hand has vanished.

This is a very standard manipulative routine that uses repetition to strengthen the effect of the color change, and then surprise to end the spectator's thinking process.

Maskelyne and Devant said that the only permissible time to mix effects is when the first is one of repetition and the second one of surprise.

Most sleight of hand methods have some weakness inherent in them--you can show the hand empty before, but not after; you can show the hand empty after, but not before; you can show the hand empty before and after, but the hands must both touch the deck before the change.

The use of repetition with serial change of methods is one way to strengthen the overall impression. By using each change of method to cancel out the weaknesses of the others, the overall impression of magic is fortified.

Perhaps certain feats--such as a vanish of a small object--have no methods that are convincing enough on their own to leave a lasting impression of magic. Perhaps these are the feats which require repetition and change of method in order to produce a solid effect at all.

My point is that any time a spectator looks at an effect the second time, he will have some idea of what the weak points may be in the procedure and where to look, if not for what to look.

They may be clueless as to how the trick was done the first time, but in case they are not--and sometimes even a great trick can suggest a possible solution--doing the trick a second time with the same method might confirm or suggest that method. However, if the second time the effect is performed the method is changed in a way that cancels out the first method employed, the spectator will be farther from, not closer to an explanation:

"I thought he must have done something when he touched the cards, but this time he didn't even go near them."

All he needs to escape the mental dilemma is "I don't know what he did, but I saw him do something when he put the deck on the table." A second method can cancel out this weak spot and put him back in his box where he belongs.

We have not really succeeded by creating a puzzle that cannot be figured out. We must create a lasting impression of magic. Any hint of method or trickery or sleight of hand must be excised to accomplish this. "I don't know what he did, but I saw him do something..." is just as life-threatening to magic as "It's in your other hand."

Every effect in my closeup card act is based to some degree of repetition: Chicago Surprise, multiple card to pocket sequences, Phoenix Aces, Ambitious Card, and then (surprise) Card to Envelope and Card on Ceiling. I use the same routine in walk around and formal situations such as the Magic Castle CloseUp Gallery.

My experience has been that audiences (both magician and lay people) are not bored by this routine, and that the routine leaves a lasting impression of magic as well as eliciting laughter and applause in performance. So my personal experience backs up this theoretical argument.

There's a lot of repetition going on here ;-)

There does seem to be a lot of repetition going on here.

Yes, and refer to part D of Tilman's original post...

Maybe someone should lock this thread and we could all meet over at Ollie's.

http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......7&19

That's an excellent idea.