Have you seen the lecture?

I don’t know when it happened and how. But it happened. At one time, many of the lec­tur­ers on the cir­cuit star­ted to per­form card tricks (on the table top). I have noth­ing against it (I like card tricks), but I had a prob­lem: actu­ally see­ing what was hap­pen­ing on the lecturer’s card table.

Over the years, the qual­ity of my eye­sight dimin­ished and the attend­ance at con­ven­tion lec­tures grew. It’s a nat­ur­al thing. But then, it was not only that. I noted that in most lec­ture ven­ues it seemed the organ­isers didn’t care too much about the vis­ib­il­ity of the lec­ture. Audi­ences sit­ting on a flat floor, some­times a room full of 70 people. How can I expect to see what is hap­pen­ing on a (non-tilted) per­form­ing table?

For me it seems it would be an idea to adapt a few things con­cern­ing »small item lectures«:

1. Lim­it the audi­ence to max­im­um 20 people and grant every­one a good seat.

2. Tilt the per­form­ance table, so every­one can see the full table top.

3. Divide lec­tures into intim­ate lec­tures (close-up, cards, coins, etc.) and stage lec­tures (or stand-up, party magic). Do stage lec­tures on a stage or plat­form, intim­ate lec­tures in a smal­ler room.

4. Book suit­able performers/​lecturers for the job.

Being a lec­turer by myself, I know all the prob­lems and bene­fits of doing card mater­i­al in a lec­ture: easy to do and travel with, lots of pos­sib­il­it­ies, packs-small-sells-well tricks/​gimmicks, easy to con­struct. Also, the pos­sib­il­ity to show­case one’s abil­it­ies with the paste­boards and make a great impres­sion. So far, in the past years I tried to avoid card tricks in my lec­tures as much as pos­sible, doing the occa­sion­al one, but made sure it was a stand-up trick every­body could eas­ily follow.

Then they had the bright idea of using video screens (after all, it’s new, it’s tech­no­logy, it’s hip and shows off well). As you can see in the pic­ture, the vis­ib­il­ity is not gran­ted through that alone. The miser­able res­ult is depic­ted in the pic. Also, all the performer’s present­a­tion and mis­dir­ec­tion get com­pletely lost, people star­ing only at hands, close-up pads, cards and coins in full-screen and in jumbo size. It kills all the flair of the per­form­ance. Stupid.

Per­son­ally, I don’t care to sit level with the floor amongst 700 people, 30 or 40 meters away, and stare at a dim video screen (prob­ably with bad cam­era hand­ling!), »enjoy­ing« a lec­ture. A waste of time and embarrassing.

Con­ven­tion organ­isers – start to change some­thing, not only in think­ing and talk­ing, but in tak­ing action. Please do it for the art of magic and the bene­fit of the attendees who really want to learn and take some­thing out of a lecture.

And do it for the sake of the few real close-up and card pro­fes­sion­al lec­tur­ers, who would bene­fit without a doubt from bet­ter view­ing con­di­tions. It shows some (over­due) respect for their work and craft.

I am fed up with unlov­ingly presen­ted and hard to see “card lectures” …