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Chloe Crawford receives “Assistant of the Year Award” from Society of American Magicians

Chloe Crawford receives “Assistant of the Year Award” from Society of American Magicians

February 1, 2015 by VegasNews.com

Chloe Crawford, Assistant and Choreographer for MURRAY ‘Celebrity Magician’ at Planet Hollywood, received Assistant of the Year Award for 2014 from the Society of American Magicians in Vancouver, British Columbia this weekend. Chloe and Murray had a busy week filming Masters of Illusion Season 2 in Hollywood at Red Studios then buzzing up to Murray’s hometown Vancouver, BC for the Society of American Magicians annual dinner awards banquet where Chloe received her award. It’s an honor to be a recipient of this award as many past legendary assistants have won it.


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Pick a card, any card: Researchers show how magicians sway decision-making

Pick a card, any card: Researchers show how magicians sway decision-making

Press Release – University of British Columbia.

Magicians have astonished audiences for centuries by subtly, yet powerfully, influencing their decisions. But there has been little systematic study of the psychological factors that make magic tricks work.

Now, a team of researchers from McGill University and UBC has combined the art of conjuring and the science of psychology to demonstrate how certain contextual factors can sway the decisions people make, even though they may feel that they are choosing freely – a finding with potential implications even for daily decision-making.

“We began with a principle of magic that we didn’t fully understand: how magicians influence audiences to choose a particular card without their awareness,” explains Jay Olson, lead author of a new study published in Consciousness and Cognition. “We found that people tend to choose options that are more salient or attention-grabbing, but they don’t know why they chose them,” says Olson, a graduate student in psychiatry in McGill University’s Raz Lab, which investigates psychological phenomena such as attention and consciousness.

The research was conducted in two stages. In the first, Olson (who is also a professional magician) approached 118 people on streets and university campuses and asked them to choose a card by glancing at one as he flipped through a deck of playing cards. The entire riffle took around half a second, but Olson used a technique to make one of the cards – the “target card” – more prominent than the rest. Some 98% of participants chose the target card; but nine in 10 reported feeling they had a free choice. Many concocted explanations for their decisions: one, for example, claimed she chose the target card (the 10 of Hearts) because “hearts are a common symbol and the red stood out.”

In the second stage, the researchers created a simple computer-based version of the riffle by presenting a series of 26 images of cards sequentially on a screen. Researchers asked participants to silently choose a card, then enter it after each of 28 different trials. Overall, participants chose the target card on 30% of the trials. Although “reasonably high” this rate was much lower than in the first study, “possibly because many of the social and situational factors central to magic tricks were absent” from the conventional laboratory conditions in which this stage was carried out, says co-author Ronald Rensink, a professor of psychology and computer science at the University of British Columbia. In a magic performance, for instance, spectators may be influenced by the personality of the magician, expectations created by the setup, and pressure to choose a card quickly, he notes.

“Magic provides an unusual lens to examine and unravel behaviour and the processing of higher brain functions,” says co-author Amir Raz, who is a former professional magician and holds the Canada Research Chair in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention in McGill’s Faculty of Medicine. “This study joins a nascent wave of experiments that binds the magical arts to the principles of psychological and neural sciences. Such a marriage has the potential to elucidate fundamental aspects of behavioural science as well as advance the art of conjuring.”

Vancouver magician Alym Amlani, an accounting instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, B.C., also contributed to the study.

Funding for the research was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

“Influencing Choice Without Awareness,” Jay A. Olson et al, Consciousness and Cognition, published online Feb. 5, 2015. DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2015.01.004

– See more at: http://www.noodls.com/view/FAC18B6C29CC2C8DEB79E1A36809C655D08F5366?9801xxx1423159869#sthash.Re9C0EHX.dpuf

Patrick Page auction..

Patrick Page auction..

Look for an exciting new auction in a few days of items from the collection of Patrick Page. Signed documents, rare photos, and wonderful odd papers from around the world.. 

http://us10.campaign-archive1.com/?u=dfb38d568f2598253ad85fba7&id=ef51144481&e=94fcd326fc

Final Page turns as Pat Page – the ‘magician’s magician’ – completes his last trick..

HE WAS the magician’s magician. The man conjurors consulted for confidential advice on developing tricks, and his work still influences the profession today.

• Dundee-born Pat Page was regarded as the ‘magician’s magician’.

Yet if you were to mention the name of Scots-born Pat Page outside the secret world of illusionists, few would recognise it.

However, yesterday some of the biggest names in the industry paid tribute to the magician following his death at the age of 81.

Television magician Derren Brown described Mr Page as “a genius of our craft” and said he was “devastated” by the news of his death, while others said Mr Page’s passing had “left a void in magic, that will be impossible to fill”.

Born and brought up in Dundee, Mr Page was among the first wave of British post-war magicians who invented and wrote down many of the tricks still used to this day.

His first publication, The Big Book of Magic, is considered a Bible among magicians, while he was said to be the master of the “Topit”, a unique vanishing trick he devised that gained the admiration of his peers.

Mr Page avoided a high profile in public yet his abilities meant he was constantly sought out by his peers.

He worked with Paul Daniels in the 1970s and was a consultant on the James Bond movie Casino Royale, in which playing cards were prominent.

Derren Brown, with whom Mr Page had worked as an adviser, said: “Magicians worth their salt will know that Patrick was a genius of our craft, and a famously generous man.

"I knew him a little from his consultancy work on some of my projects – he was a brilliantly rude, sharp-witted, sensationally likeable Scot, better at magic and more knowledgeable than any of us. It is an honour to have known him.”

Mr Page’s abilities as a performer and adviser were combined finally with the 2007 film Magicians, starring comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb, working in front and behind the camera.

However, during his long career Mr Page was sustained through working the club circuit and publishing numerous books, recorded instructional tapes and DVDs for beginner magicians.

He continued to work right up until his death at the end of last week.

Jack Delvin, president of the Magic Circle and a long-time friend, said that though he was not well-known to the public, his absence would be felt by them.

“He really was the magician’s magician,” he said. “In the world of magic he was a legendary character: he helped magicians to become famous with his inventions, new tricks, teachings and original way of presenting effects. He was generous with his time when it came to teaching magic tricks.”

The youngest of six siblings to Patrick and Jane Page, he married his wife Margaret at 22 years of age before moving to London to work in Davenport’s Magic Store during the early 1960s, where he stayed for 15 years, becoming manager.

Betty Davenport, whose family established the store in 1898, said: “His passing is incredibly sad for us. He was a brilliant magician, capable of demonstrating every trick in our shop. We loved having him work here.”

Top magician Nick Lewin recalled being amazed by the Scot on his visits to the store: “For a youthful magician there weren’t many places where you could spend an uninterrupted hour with a master magician like Pat.

"You knew that at some point during your visit you were going to be fooled by the big ashtray in which he was stubbing out his cigarettes. Patrick was the king of misdirection and could palm a selected card out of the deck and leave it under that ashtray.

"It doesn’t sound much; a chosen card arrives under an ashtray? Maybe when the card arrived there for the first time it wasn’t too amazing. However by the time Pat had fooled you for the tenth time with the same trick it became pretty darn amazing.”

http://www.scotsman.com/news/final-page-turns-as-pat-page-the-magician-s-magician-completes-his-last-trick-1-790881