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Former Schaumburg resident pushes magic’s boundaries with ‘Illusionists’

Former Schaumburg resident pushes magic’s boundaries with ‘Illusionists’

By Scott C. Morgan for the Daily Herald..

llusionist Dan Sperry didn’t always look like shock rocker Marilyn Manson’s scary sibling.

Before Sperry amazed audiences with his creepy illusions like swallowing razor blades or tugging a strand of dental floss through his neck – a trick that notoriously freaked out judge Howie Mandel during Sperry’s run on the 2010 season of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” – the Minnesota native and former Schaumburg resident dressed as an old-school magician for numerous Chicago-area performances at elementary schools and kid’s birthday parties.

“When I was younger, I kind of went with the classic magician look with tails and playing cards, but offstage I’d be into punk music, Alfred Hitchcock and horror films like the old-school Universal Studios monster movies or those by director John Carpenter,” Sperry said. “Mid-to-late teens, I let some more of who I was offstage in real life trickle into my onstage performances.”  Read more..   http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20150308/entlife/150309342/

The Power of Magical Thinking.. David Copperfield on the Enemies of Art

The Power of Magical Thinking.. David Copperfield on the Enemies of Art

By David Copperfield for the New York Times.

In 2012, a man in Saudi Arabia was executed for practicing witchcraft; last year, guest workers were put on trial in Saudi Arabia for “witchcraft and sorcery”; already this year, reports surfaced of the Islamic State’s having beheaded a street magician in Syria; and, of course there was the attack in Paris on Charlie Hebdo.

The most recent events overshadowed North Korea’s Christmastime hacking of Sony over “The Interview.” Yet the people who hacked Sony, the men who reportedly murdered the magician, and the terrorists in Paris all share a hatred of free speech and democracy. They also share the wrongheaded belief that brutality and force can suppress the human spirit and its inevitable expression through art. They’re fighting a losing battle.

As a magician and a student of magic history, I can attest that magic has often run afoul of zealots. I have numerous copies of “The Discoverie of Witchcraft.” It was written in 1584 to show that what people thought was the devil’s work was sleight of hand. King James I wasn’t persuaded. He ordered every copy burned… Read more..

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/opinion/david-copperfield-on-the-enemies-of-art.html?_r=0

The science behind magic: Study reveals psychology at work during card tricks..

The science behind magic: Study reveals psychology at work during card tricks..

A good magician never reveals his tricks, but that hasn’t stopped Jay Olson from trying to understand the science behind them.

Mr. Olson, 28, a professional magician and graduate student at McGill University, is the lead author of a study that explores the psychological factors that make card tricks work. The goal was to learn how outside factors influence decision-making.

“Magicians usually know the secret, but they don’t know the psychology behind the magic trick,” said Mr. Olson, who is in McGill’s psychiatry program.

For the first part of the study, published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, he performed a card trick on 118 people. The trick is simple: The magician flips through a deck of cards and asks the subject to pick a card, intentionally showing one card for longer than the rest. Read more..

http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/02/11/the-science-behind-magic-study-reveals-psychology-at-work-during-card-tricks/

A Movie on the Life of the Amazing Randi, a Magician, Escape Artist and Skeptic

A Movie on the Life of the Amazing Randi, a Magician, Escape Artist and Skeptic

    A Movie on the Life of the Amazing Randi, a Magician, Escape Artist and Skeptic – Los Angeles | Los Angeles News and Events | LA Weekly   

     “The public really doesn’t listen when they’re being told straightforward facts,” says the Amazing Randi. The magician, escape artist and tiny lion of principled skepticism, now north of 80, leans forward in a black chair, all knees and elbows and Old Testament beard. If it weren’t for that sharpie’s suit he’s wearing, the kind that looks like it has face cards slipped between its every seam, he could be some wise-wizard marionette rigged up by the Henson Workshop.  

     Randi is dismayed, thinking of frauds he’s exposed, truths he’s fought for, and the fact that America still hasn’t run its psychics and UFO abductees and flim-flam preachers out of the country on a rail. “They would rather accept what some charismatic character tells them than really think about what the truth might be,” Randi says. “They’d rather have the romance and the lies.”

http://www.laweekly.com/film/a-movie-on-the-life-of-the-amazing-randi-a-magician-escape-artist-and-skeptic-5422399