"Details make for
perfection, but perfection is no detail"
Leonardo
Evening readers, however few I
may have, if any. My Internet has been down for the last couple of days thus
making it very hard for me to keep this blog up and running. For that I present
this apology, directed once again to anyone who has been keeping up with my
posts.
I did manage to post that
lovely Enfield quote from the introduction of Dai Vernon's Inner Secrets of
Card Magic. Because of the internet problem I was not quite sure if the post
made it to the blog or not. I also published that lovely photo of The
Professor, photoshoped by yours truly. I love Design, particularly Graphic
Design. Last year I took a graphic Designing course at school with one of the
greatest, if not the greatest teachers I have ever had the pleasure to learn
from. Her name's Silvia Perez and She also teaches Design at UBA (University of
Buenos Aires, one of the best public universities in the world)
What stroke me the most about
her class was how much it taught me about attention to detail, composition and
perhaps the most valuable thing of all, communication
If you consider yourself to be
a Vernon/Erdnase Student, I am sure that you realised how much those things
apply to the construction, presentation and overall study of card artifice.
I see the pieces of the puzzle start
to come together for it's not by mere chance that I decided to speak about Dai
Vernon and Silvia's wonderful class in the same entry. In fact it was around June
last year that I had to sit down for her test on communicational situations,
design and its construction. Silvia's test was and in fact still is the talk of
the town. It's regarded as one of the more complex tests a student has ever had
the displeasure to sit down and write... However, that's not my point, since I
did well on the test. However I remember walking away that day with a single
thing in mind, an epiphany if you will. It could be summarized shortly:
"The job of the graphic
designer is to create a communicational situation in which the relationship
between the spectator and the design produces only one outcome, the right one.
Basically, it all serves to that final effect the design has on the person who
it is intended for. Let's clarify things with a little example: When you see a
green sign that says exit right above a door, that is meant to tell you one
thing and one thing only, and that's the place in which you're supposed to exit
the venue you're in. It serves only one purpose, in this case, civil
indication, I guess you could say."
Now what if you were to do the
same thing but replace the design for a magical effect? To my mind I think we
may arrive at something that is quite like Darwin Ortiz's Strong Magic
philosphy, which I happen to be a student of. So, just for the sake of it
"The job of the magician
is to create a communicational situation in which the relationship between the
spectator and the effect produces only one outcome, the strongest one
possible."
I'd like to leave you with a
final axiom which I consider to be about the most important thing when looking
for new material
"The thing that matters
the most is how strong the effect is, since that is directly proportional to
how memorable that effect will be on those who witness it"
Please grab a copy of both
strong magic and designing miracles and make a point of reading them at least
once every year
"Do not fear a man who has practiced 10.000 kicks once, Fear he who has practiced one kick then thousand times"
Bruce Lee
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