I like this guys dove act: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXm-dBSUGCs

Yep.. But not sure that the doves liked it !

Oh come on - he DID kiss the bird before throwing it roughly into the cage.. It makes me cringe to see birds yanked out like that. He had some nice moves but it seems cruel to me.

I do not think that even one bird materialized magically;
they were all yanked out from a hiding place.

I think you can tell that the audience likes the act that Dynamike referenced just from their reactions/applause. To me, that makes the act at the very least entertaining whether they are fooled or not. Furthermore I think that you and I as magicians know that technically "not... even one bird materialized magically" but lay people don't. _We_ know what's really going on. The average lay audience is fooled, partly because they "willingly suspend their disbelief" and partly because everything happens so fast that they don't have time to pause and reverse engineer what they've just seen. I think only magicians go to a magic show determined to figure out the secrets of everything that momentarily fools them. And if they _are_ fooled they go back for a second performance (or rewind the video and play it in slow motion).

A cliche among cynical, jaded magicians is that "no one is fooled by the appearance of _________ (fill in the blank) because the secret modus is 'obvious.'" I would guess that a majority of lay audiences still think, for instance, that when things appear (whether they are cards, billiard balls, or birds) that they were hidden in the sleeve. Before I began my study of magic, when I saw cards and billiard balls appear at a magician's fingertips, I "reverse engineered" what I had seen and confidently told myself, "There's a gadget in his sleeve with a spring that shoots the cards and billiard balls into his hand." (That's a conclusion based on Sherlock Holmes's Law: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.")

People _want_ to escape from "reality." That's why they enjoy watching movies where superheroes fly (even though the audiences know that the superheroes don't really fly) and why audiences go to a magic show and enjoy it even though they know that the dove doesn't really appear out of nowhere or magically change into a handkerchief.

----- Amado "Sonny" Narvaez
P.S. Here's a non-dove magic example of how the mind looks for the complicated solution rather than the easy reality. The first time I saw a coin pushed through a square of latex, I was convinced that the magician was using something NASA had developed for the space program so that if a meteor broke through the wall of a space capsule, the wall would automatically seal itself. I eventually learned the secret, of course, but when lay people ask how it was done, I sometimes tell them about the secret NASA material. I console myself by reminding myself that the more intelligent a person is, the easier it is to fool them
That makes magic a kind of "emperor's new clothes" syndrome.

I think that no matter if the audience is fooled.. It is still treating the birds like poorly treated props.
Audiences are getting far more sensitive to the treatment of animals.. And dove acts that rip birds out with such violence will not be tolerated by tomorrows crowds.

I would wonder if anyone who knows Jaehoon Lin could tell us about how he treats his birds, preferably not him. A less biased opinion would be better. I don't know if I consider certain handling's of animals like the rough toss into the cage, as being torture. I don't work with doves so I am not familiar with releasing a dove from a h*****s and what is required to do it effectively. I just figure if he works with these birds every day that the birds get a lot of workouts in practice. Maybe it is like a runner, he starts out slow and easy and works the birds up to it. I don't know, but I wouldn't say he was mistreating them. I would say he was "firm" with them, not painfully so though.

I've watched this video many times and coming from a long time dove worker, let me say that none of his steals were jerky, or harmful to the birds. His steals are actually quite smooth. After each production, he doesn't just throw the birds in the cage. He let's them settle down a bit and then puts them in the cage. Since there is no perch to deal with, it may seem like he's handling the birds roughly but he's just putting them on the floor of the Café.

Before the vanish, notice he moves each bird to the center so protect them. I do find a little fault with this as it telegraphs what is going to happen. The only other fault I find is that the cage is a little small for that many birds. Initially they were on top of one another, but again that isn't harmful.

That is so true! When trying to figure stuff out the more intelligent you are the harder it is sometimes to understand. Of course intelligent people don't always look for the simpleton solution many offer.