• No events.

EMC 2012 – Session 7 – Professor Richard Wiseman – Perceiving the Impossible

July 29th, 2012 by Magic Convention Guide

Essential Magic Conference
Professor Richard Wiseman talked about how our perception can change what we see. In this example he talked about how our brains can see faces that arent actually there… Demonstrating by showing us a number of images that didnt actually contain faces, but our brains perceived one.

He also showed how our brains are used to things happening, and when they don’t, well, we dont know how to react, a principal which can be used by magicians to great effect.

He continued to talk about some of the early chrono photography film through use of series of consecutive images, including one of the first of a magician and magic.  He managed to visit the location of a large set of these images dating back to a 120 year old set of images of  Raynaly, a simple ball vanish, and showed us the very short clip of these images in motion.

Essential Magic Conference

Richard finished with an effect which demonstrated our perception, and how it can be quite easily fooled.. with a lovely magic square with cards..

Richard’s talks are always extremely humorous, entertaining and thought provoking, this was no exception!

You can also pick up a host of Richard Wiseman books at Amazon

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