Our dear friend the brilliant magician Luis Piedrahita recently told us about La biblioteca digital de ilusionismo (Digital Library of Illusion) – a fascinating digital resource for magicians and scholars. At the moment, this library offers access to 62 fully scanned volumes divided into categories: Card Magic, Mentalism, Prestidigitation, White Magic, Magic History, and Scientific Magic.

This database is a part of the Fundación Juan March that was founded in 1955 by Spanish Financier Juan March Ordinas. Based in Madrid, the institution is dedicated to science and the humanities, with a special emphasis on the arts. The Library of Illusion is a special collection meant to compliment the Spanish Library of Contemporary Music and Theater (as well as a massive collection from the library of Argentinean writer Julio Cortázar).

Of particular note, this database provides access to Spain’s first true magic book: Engaños a ojos vistos by Pablo Minguet Madrid, 1733; as well as many other titles, including J. Mieg’s comprehensive El brujo en sociedad Madrid, 1839. Readers will find texts in other languages, such as: Henri Decremps’s La magie blanche dévoilée Paris, 1789, and, a more recent title, Harlan Tarbell’s Crazy Stunts Minneapolis, 1929. There are a number of Spanish translations, in particular: Robert-Houdin’s French L’art de gagner a tous les jeux Paris, 1890 and Carlo Willman’s German Die Moderne Salon-Magie Valencia, 1897.

These digital books have been scanned at a high resolution so that each page looks as it would in real life. Unlike the physical volumes in a rare book room, these books require no special handling or reading stands, and can be flipped through rapidly and noisily. (A Flash animation provides this effect). They are also fully searchable.

The impetus for this project came with a donation from the library of Spanish magic historian José Puchol de Montís in 1988. With nearly 2,000 titles to draw from, we hope that this digital resource will continue to grow.

A pretty interesting method for reading someone’s mind is the subject of this video. Basically the researchers have studied the brain activity using an MRI while showing the participants a number of videos. They then used the brain activity they collected while the participants were watching different videos and made a composite video based on averages. While it is not perfect mind reading, you can see some resemblance to the original input. Regardless it is fascinating and could lead to a number of fascinating new and wonderful things. Here are some links that discuss the project more thoroughly:

Current Biology

International Business Times

Geekosystem

UC Berkeley News Center

The Gallant Lab at UC Berkeley

Gizmodo

In this demo they use the front facing camera on the iPad to track a person’s head, as the person, or screen, is moved around, the image is adjusted to give a three dimensional effect. Pretty nifty. What magic effects can be done? Will someone ever secretly build an iPad into a table surface for magic purposes?

Raised by lightning bolts, these factory workers assemble decks of playing cards at speeds that are downright astonishing! Of course, Dan and Dave Buck might be able to provide some competition, if they ever put their cards back in the case! Thanks to Steve Cuiffo for pointing out this fascinating video.

This is amazing! A robot hand that can grab, throw, catch, dribble, tie knots, spin pens, etc. How long will it be before we can watch a robot expertly perform the whole calendar of sleights in Erdnase? Will sleights of the future be developed on the computer and available for download onto our robot hands? Will practice become obsolete? Exciting and interesting times are at hand, literally.

Learn more about this here.

A new magic event looms on the horizon! Magic: The Science of Wonder is a new museum exhibit which is going to be shown in Texas at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Featuring many notable performers, including John Carney and Richard Hatch, as well as a plethora of artifacts, video, props, and other potentially intriguing displays, this exhibit holds some promise. It aims to showcase the interrelationship of science and magic by not only demonstrating some perplexing effects but also introducing some of the subtle and crafty methodology magicians use to enhance their illusions.

They have also provided video clips of John Carney and Richard Hatch performing some particularly elegant magic:

Watch Richard Hatch’s beautiful routine with the Cups and Balls:

Watch John Carney as he does one of the most dazzling effects with coins ever conceived:

I recently had a spirited conversation with a group of magic collectors over the pros and cons of our very own database: Alexander – The Computer That Knows. Some suggested that any publisher who allowed his books to be scanned and uploaded onto the data base, was diluting the value of his books. The thinking being, if the information is available on line, why would anyone purchase a hard copy of the book? Others believed that the availability of this wealth of information far outweighed the potential loss of revenue to the publisher. As the owner of a niche publishing house myself (Mike Caveney’s Magic Words) it might surprise some to learn that I came down firmly in favor of the fattest possible Alexander. To my way of thinking, it’s a no brainer.

Fortunately for me, people who collect books on magic have an inherent flaw: they like the way books feel in their hands. Of course they enjoy the information these books contain but they also like the dust jacket, the gold stamping, the printed end sheets, the feel of the paper, and they enjoy seeing the spine of that book as is sits on their bookshelf. All elements that are not provided by a database. The fact that every word of these books is now on line does not change the fact that they enjoy holding that bound volume in their hands.

You might also say that with the advent of the Alexander database, I can take my entire collection of periodicals to the paper mill and have them pulped. Why not, its all on line anyway. Think of the space you’d save.

The truth is that Alexander has made my periodical collection even more valuable to me. There is nothing I enjoy more than finding numerous obscure references to some arcane subject on the Alexander database, then walking downstairs, pulling the original magazines off the shelf and settling into a comfortable chair to peruse magic history in its original form. Alexander has directed me to magazines that I haven’t peeked into for years and for that he has my undying gratitude.

And lastly, the number of people who are willing to join the Conjuring Arts Research Center so they can gain access to our wonderful pool of knowledge is not that large. I imagine they are mainly people actively engaged in the writing of a book or article about a subject that I will most likely enjoy reading. If having my books included in this pool of knowledge assists them in their task, and ultimately results in a more complete article, then we all win. And if that researcher finds him or her self reading a digitized book filled with interesting text, they might just decide to buy a copy. All of a sudden, instead of losing a customer, I just gained a new one.

If there is a down side to the Computer that Knows, I just don’t see it.