by Davide Damiani, 3A
Illusion is usually performed as an art form of entertainment on shows where the artist, commonly known as magician or illusionist, creates “magical” effects using tricks that can be physical, psychological, but, more often, the trick lies in the ability of the magician’s hands.
I joined the world of magic two years ago, after attending a magic show and after seeing how it could be “easy” to fool and entertain people at the same time. At the beginning I started training with the first deck of cards I found at home, three weeks later, more or less, I bought my first professional deck of playing cards, a deck of Bicycle directly from the USA. I learned most of the magic tricks that I know on YouTube, first from the Italians, later from people all around the world, then I started to buy books from one of my favourite American’s magician Jay Sanky. Until now I have seen so many magic tricks that I can learn a new one only by seeing it, without the need of a tutorial, because most tricks have the same principle or the same sleigh of hands, and I already know most of them. I spend hours practicing my tricks every day because a “fake” action is accepted as normal by a spectator only if you can perform it in a natural way, namely it must exactly mimic the natural movement which is based on. I always have on me some coins or rings that I roll on my fingers or some decks of cards that I scatter here and there. Till now I have bought and collected more than twenty decks, lots of coins and rings, handkerchiefs, fake thumbs, balls and other stuff for magicians.
Still now, after two years, I remain enchanted from the reaction of the people to whom I perform a magic trick, it’s so beautiful to see the stunned faces of the people trying to believe at what the have just seen.
A magician split the audience in two categories: the first one is the one that try at all costs to find out how you did the trick ( I hate these people ). In the second one there are the people that just enjoy the trick for how is done. In practice, it’s not really important what the illusionist does, but as the viewer experiences the effect.
