Welcome to PSIENCE. Over the next 12 months we hope to share ideas with you which you will be able to adopt and adapt to your own performances. As is always the case, we remind you that this material may be used in live performance situations only. No Television, Cable, DVD’s, YouTube, downloads or the like. If you find the pending desire to use some of these ideas in other than a live performance setting, please contact us to discuss the possibilities.
Our first issue offers a new mathless method to determine any day for any date and a new way to present it that makes it more of a performance and less of a stunt. In addition, you will find a profoundly simple and deceptive new method for apparently bending a marked, borrowed coin while it is held in your spectator’s hand.
In the next few months we hope to bring you a forum to accompany the material. This will be a safe and secure place where you and other PSIENCE members can discuss and advance the material shared in this Journal.
If you have any ideas, suggestions, questions, comments or concerns; please reach out to us via email. We appreciate your investment in this project and we would like your experience to be a beneficial one.
In Search of Dowsing
Magicians, mentalists and mystery performers are a funny lot, often quick to adopt and demonstrate a power, practice or system which they have neither studied nor believe. Take, for example, dowsing: a technique for searching for underground water, minerals, or anything invisible, by observing and feeling the motion of a hand-held pointer (traditionally a forked stick or paired bent wires) or the changes in direction of a pendulum, proportedly in response to unseen influences.
Is not the magic wand a hand-held, power-invested stick?
In this issue of The journal, we consider magic’s conflicted relationship with dowsing in its varied forms and offer two demonstrations of the practice. We sincerely hope these approaches help guide you towards the things you seek.
Duns Congue Vestrum Fac
Michael Weber The Journal of Psience (Vol 1 Issue 3)
”That’s where the money is…”
This third issue of the Journal marks the half-way point for the first year of enrollment. A meeting place is under construction. It will offer those currently enrolled an opportunity to interact with each other and with the ideas and routines offered in the issues of the Journal.
The first bonus issue is also nearing completion. It will present an alternative path to achieving a moment of theatrical mind reading that traditionally focuses on a sterile data set. This non-traditional approach focuses on the core characteristics of the subject matter at hand making the process of mindreading feel more like a deepening sense of understanding and less like a game of hang-man.
This month’s presentations offer a look at the balance between process and outcome. Too much procedure and the entire experience will feel less like an entertainment and more like a burden-some chore. But if the steps leading up to a final revelation are too few or insignificant, they fre-quently offer little opportunity for the performer to develop his character or the relationship be-tween himself and his audience. As is most often the case, balance is the key. We want to provide an internal logic for the process, while leaving room for mystery. Work to offer moments of partici-pation from and interaction with members of the audience which are designed to strengthen the feeling of mystery. And finally, make sure the length and difficulty of the journey leads to a desti-nation which is exponentially more satisfying than the effort required to get there.
Let the journey begin.
Michael Weber The Journal of Psience (Vol 1 Issue 4)
Issue Four of the Journal takes a second look at Color Match which has become one of the most favored effects in magic and mentalism. Tony Anverdi started it all back in the early 1980’s and 30 years later, Craig Filicetti revived the method and effect with a vengeance. Few effects offer the same degree of spectator freedom and participation. Even fewer routines provide the guaranteed punch of the color-based drawing duplication. This month’s bonus material moves outside the lines and reexamines the Color Match effect and procedure in an informal context. Many restaurants offer a small box of crayons to amuse their youngest guests, a practice of which the clever per-former can take advantage. Finally, be on the look out for a few select offers of items which have only been available at recent conferences like The Genii Convention in Orlando and the Las Vegas based Mindvention (where a stage performance of the Day for Any Date from Issue One generated solid applause, much positive commentary, dozens of inquisi-tive mentalists and a healthy increase in the number of Psience members.) Please remember that this material is being shared so you can perform it (as long as you do not perform it on television, cable, YouTube or any other broadcast, live streamed or recorded format. Let’s keep live experiences alive.)
Michael Weber The Journal of Psience (Vol 1 Issue 5)
Performers are on a constant search for value. What is the maximum impact possible for the most reasonable amount of total investment? There are many effects that offer a lifelong return, but the time and money required to achieve them make them cost prohibitive.
The current marketplace is brimming with cheap and easy “quick fix” effects or methods but the performance value is usually insubstantial, fleeting or both. So what’s worth it? What lasts?
One time-tested source of value is the incidental wonder. A demonstration relying on everyday objects, and as few of them as is possible, is a good place to start. This issue’s offerings are a foundational mind reading effect and an optional supplementary add-on which both use the most common of everyday objects: the cash register receipt.
While we have developed material around this object for more than 20 years, we feel that this particular approach offers a new, stronger, underlying structure which allows you to describe the characteristics of a thought-of object, and conclude by correctly naming the actual object.
Happy Shopping.
Duis Congue Vestrum Fac
Michael Weber The Journal of Psience (Vol 1 Issue 6)
No Such Thing As Luck
It has been observed that three of the fundamental tools of a Mentalist are faking, finding, and forcing.
Faking can include deceptions like a billet switch or the Hoy miscall of a page number.
Tools and techniques such as an index or peek might fall in the arena of “Finding.”
Forces are numerous, but each presents a particular set of challenges: Are the objects natu-ral? Is the selection process suspicious? Can I vary the information that is forced for each performance?
This issue’s offering is a re-examination of an unusual force applied to a One-Ahead rou-tine. The presentation is crafted as a display of precognition, but it would be a worthwhile exercise for the reader to figure out how to present this as mind reading.
Michael Weber The Journal of Psience (Vol 1 Issue 7)
Chewing gum makes you smarter” or so claims the 1998 research in the article found at the website www.chewsmarter.com.The St. Lawrence University study titled “Cognitive ad-vantages of chewing gum: Now you see them, now you don’t” explains that the mechanical action of chewing produces a short-term increase in cognitive agility. Tests of memory, pattern recognition and rapid calcula-tion all showed statistically significant improvement for the subjects who chewed gum a few moments be-fore engaging in the testing activities. The benefits seem to have durational limits as subjects returned to their normal level of performance 15 to 20 minutes af-ter the initial gum chewing.
Other studies on gum chewing and performance in-clude “Effects of chewing gum and time-on-task on alertness and attention” “Effects of chewing gum on cognitive function, mood and physiology in stressed and non-stressed volunteers,” “Chewing gum benefits sustained attention in the absence of task degradation” in The Journal of Nutritional Neuroscience and “Gummed-up memory: Chewing gum impairs short-term recall” in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
