Recently visualist Will Tsai performed his version of the Matrix effect on AGT. As it could be foreseen, it got a tremendous reaction on the various social media and magic forums.
The main point of discussion is without a doubt the question whether this routine could or should be labeled as magic or not. Obviously, the table used does all the work. Some people compared it to ‘playing’ a player piano or instrument on stage, faking the actual playing a musician has to do on his (real) instrument.
In a certain way, this is true. There is no actual sleight-of-hand on Will’s side. The effects are brought through the mechanical table and his work (which he did perfectly) was to synchronize his hand actions and movements with the results of his mechanical table.
I don’t mind (as a magician) to use gimmicks. We all did and do. It has always been done. Just take a look at the old mechanical tables with all the mechanisms, trapdoors and other gimmicks built inside. See the mechanical cups for the cups and balls picking up the small balls or producing them. See all the gimmicks that have been invented to replace sleight-of-hand in the miser’s dream effect. Many times, the use of gimmicks has actually improved an effect, made it stronger.
There is nothing to be said against the use of these gimmicks, IF they are built into the routine in an intelligent way and used there in such a way that the spectators have no idea that a gimmick could be used.
Ideally, this is (was) done by mixing the gimmick with the sleight-of-hand. So in Will’s routine, he first started with the cards and the coins and went on to perform a (admittedly super clean) version of the Matrix effect. He could have used a simple (or more elaborated) pure sleight-of-hand version of this, but didn’t. But this doesn’t matter, because what the audience sees is a Matrix with coins and cards, and they assume it is done by him, using sleight-of-hand. That is because he handles the cards, puts them onto the coins, etc. With each move there ‘could’ have been something done by him, but no one ever saw something. So far, so good.
Now for the problematic part. He went on to the second phase, repeating the Matrix effect, where the coins gather and travel back to their places – but this time there are no cards and his hands are way above the coins, don’t even touching them. The translocations happen in full view.
Sure this looks like trick photography, and some folks even came to the conclusion that video editing and camera tricks were used in his performance!
He topped it all by changing the four coins into rose petals, singly and in full view, again with his hands not coming near to the coins/petals. A beautiful effect idea, but the transformations looked a bit mechanical.
For me, this is an unnecessary overload, giving away the secrets of his marvelous mechanical table. Had he put in some (even very tiny) ‘fake’ moves, or at least covered the coins with his hands (especially in the changing into petals sequence), then everything would have been much more mystical. He could have shown the hands to be totally empty after each passage, and the mystery would even have heightened. Nobody would think of the table being the reason for the ‘magic’.
It is a pity that now even lay persons can easily come to the solution that the table is gimmicked and does the work. There are even Youtube clips out already, explaining in detail the mechanical variations. The internet is fast and a TV-format like the AGT has a wide reach and media coverage and publicity. Means that quite a lot of people get this information in a very short time.
The routine was a big chance to create an incredible Matrix routine and incredible magic. The oldtimers knew that it is harmful to magic to present mechanical wonders ‘pure’ and always used gimmicks in combination with genuine sleight-of-hand techniques.
Sometimes it is no good going too far and creating (by mechanical means) something which seems absolutely impossible and screams for a technical solution in the minds of the spectators. For them, once they come to the conclusion that a tricky table is used, the magic and the ‘power’ of the magician is gone. The whole thing is reduced to a mechanical puzzle. It is explainable. The feeling of magic should that there is no explanation possible.
So unfortunately the beautiful concept and technical solution is more or less reduced to a ‘mechanical gimmick demonstration’, which was fine when Kempelen demonstrated his ‘Chess Playing Turk’. But Kempelen openly stated that it is a machine and used magical techniques to hide the human secret. Same with the automatons Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin put on display. They were openly displayed as mechanical marvels.
Magic is magic, and mechanical toys are mechanical toys. If I had to mix them method wise, I would always at least pretend to ‘do something’.
I would fake to do some sleight of hand.
Pass it on!