With Eric Mead hosting,

Armando Lucero talked about what is magic, a massive subject! He discusses how to find out who we are, with a great story about how he got booked as a comedian and juggler despite being a magician!

He explains how tricks are the things we do to achieve magic. Not the same things. He examines what other tools we have to achieve the effect of creating magic for the audience.

Richard Wiseman talked about perception. Some great video clips and pictures illustrating his points. Talking about chronofilm finding the first film of a magician performing in 1892 doing a ball vanish. It’s like a time travelling machine. He ended with a trick. Two decks with numbers printed on. Mead shuffled, ribbon spreads and pushes a card. Wiseman deals his into 4 hands of 4. Mead selects one of the 4 hands. He turns over his selected card. His hand adds up 22. Not only that, every hand adds up to 22. And then every row, every corner, ever 4 adds to 22. A magic square with cards.

Luis Piedrahita produced 4 silver dollars from the bubbles in a small piece of bubble wrap. Then goes into a matrix using the bubble wrap .

Steve Cohen talked about Hofzinzer and recreating his salon. He explains the history of the original salon and how The Hof (sorry) got to his salon. The show ran for 11 years. About how he learnt about The Hof’s motivation for doing a salon. He goes onto to explain how he applied what he learned to his own show with refreshing honesty.

He shared three lessons he learned doing his show. You’ll have to register to learn these points…

Yann Frisch talked on creativity. About the concept of author and the interpreter. About how to understand where you want to get to with your creativity and how to get there. A stage is a blank space and anything is possible. How magic is a personal art. Don’t limit yourself with preconceptions about what is possible. You are the author of your act.

He explained why he chose not to use music. When you have the blank space, everything you add means something else isn’t there. So adding music takes away the natural noises in his act. The balls and cup hitting the table etc.

You need a desire to say something, to do something, to make something.

Dr Gene Matasure on Winston Freer, a relatively unknown name, and his Maxam Ring illusion. He’d levitate a woman standing on a table totally surrounded. Gene shares a picture of this. The picture was called a fake, but it wasn’t. He did a lot of classic magic, including Rice Bowls, and his twist on this classic.

Freer did unique effects. Test tubes in a rack with different coloured liquids in. Spectator had free choice to pick a colour. Freer would say he could make his hands into a water tight container. Took spectator’s choice and poured it into his fist, with a thermometer sticking out. The red line of the therm would be seen to go down and down and he’d open his hand and there was a chunk of blue ice in the shape of his closed fist.

He went on to explain another unique trick that is the craziest thing I’ve heard of. Too complicated to explain and you wouldn’t believe me anyway!

He then explained the The Maxam Rings, three rings, examinable, that link together. Advert in old Genii from 1940s peeked his interest. Gene demonstrated it, it was as described.

Bill Kalush talked about askalexander.com and gave every EMC participant a free month’s access to this amazing resource with 2.5 million pages of magic books and journals he has there.

He’s introducing a brand new translation feature which looks amazing!

Richard Wiseman interviews the astonishing (ahem) Paul Harris. He’s not spoken at a magic convention for many many years. Starts off with a deep question from the chat room “if you had a dog what would it be called”.

What is the creative process, where do you start?

Start anywhere. An idea, an object, an effect, a method, something that is pretty. He illustrates this by talking about the bottle of water he is holding and describes how he can think about it. Approach it.

Oh look, this is too amazing and rare, and you’ll just need to register to hear it.

If you haven’t registered yet. You can still register during the conference, and catch up on the sessions we’ve been talking about on demand.

Just head over to the main EMC page and register now.

We are once again proud to be an EMC media partner. You can read all our reporting (both the really short summaries and the speaker by speaker posts) in our Essential Magic Conference coverage