Normally a magician will propose something unreal and then prove it real in effect. However, I think one could do it contrarywise: show something is real and then prove it is unreal. i.e., in effect, one’s assistant turns out to be a robot. An Orange Clockwork, as opposed to a Clockwork Orange, if you will.

At a wedding dinner show, I once took some real rosebuds from the center table and used them in a C&B type effect --
then plucked off petals, dropped them into a bowls of water to change into petal-like slips of paper with inspirational messages
to be read by guests.

Thank you kindly, Ken. The rose petal effect seems to fit the bill.

Nature never lies, except by magic.

It reminds me of an old card trick where at the end of a routine, the pack of playing are transformed into butterflies, in effect.

“Cardini covers up every steal with a carefully designed, natural gesture. The monocle drops from his eye as he registers bewilderment; in that moment a steal has been made. A laugh comes when he blows smoke through a monocle he has been wearing, without a glass: another crucial move has occurred. An imitator at the Palladium once did his act down to the last move, without realizing why certain mannerisms he had copied were a part of the technical usefulness of the originator's act.”

http://cardini.tv/text/18/

The glassless monocle seems to fit the contrary bill, as it goes from real to unreal.

Penn and Teller's "Lighting a Cigarette" fits the bill. So does their Cups and Balls reveal.

Thank you, Pop. I have just watched “Penn & Teller - Lighting a Cigarette?” but I think I will need to watch it many more times before I understand it and how it fits the bill.

Pop, are you suggesting they fit the bill because they expose the secret?

No, because they deconstruct the illusion. Teller shows something that seems normal and unremarkable--he lights a cigarette. There is no "secret" for the audience to discover. But they deconstruct to show the extraordinary methodology used to create the illusion of "lighting a cigarette."

Thank you, Pop. I think I need some sleep.

Hi Tommy, This trick hasn’t arrived in the mail yet but I’m wondering if it fits your description of contrary magic?
https://www.penguinmagic.com/p/17164
4 cards are shown. One at a time a hole appears in each card. The magician proves the holes are real. Having established that, the magician then shows that each hole is not real. Instead of holes the audience now sees stickers. What was clearly real was just an illusion. Again I don’t have it in hand yet so not sure how it will play but I found it delightfully offbeat and rather than use the presentation included I have a different story/script in mind for it.

But now you’ve got me using up some brain cells! Is there really a difference between going from unreal to real vs real to unreal? Ie an empty box turns out to be full. Maybe the distinction, if there is one, comes from our presentation rather than the effect? Maybe it’s time for me to go to bed! John

Well, I do not really know, Kanawati, but I think If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. I also think it might be fun to claim that this here duck is not real but is actually a ghost and prove it.

I keep thinking of that wonderful mime video with the statue that comes alive - or the head does, etc.,
with interplay between real vs imaged back and forth. The guy is French I believe.

Not a popular mine statue, but a long stage performance.

Found it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV__oZxSXLM

His name is Jerome Murat. It is a beautiful interplay between the real and the unreal but I am not sure which way it goes. I think I would regard a statue as unreal and it seems to me to go from the unreal to the real and back to the unreal.

The magical duck test;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g