Yesterday I was dismayed by one of the Swedish tabloids, I have forgotten which one. It is not uncommon that I give a sigh when I see the tabloids but I frankly believe that to work as a journalist at one of those papers you must either be wilfully ignorant or just plain stupid.
The headline of the story was something like ”find out the IQ of the men living in your area”. The ”article” was apparently based on 10 years of data and it was not difficult to figure out that it was probably based on the IQ test that all men took at age 18-19 when Sweden had general conscription. Apart from the fact that there were probably more important things happening in the world on that day. It is also remarkable that who ever wrote it seemed to think that the data would be of any relevance today. As if people don't move after they turned 19.
I would also claim that not only do people move but where they move might actually be correlated to their IQ.
Wednesday, 30 January 2013
Can magic be art?
I have read a few things about the art of magic, far less about the art of mentalism. What people say about this art is not always flattering. Some say that magicians are the ones that talk about art while dancers or painters do art. Others have said that magic is what people with no talent do if they want to stand on stage.
Unfortunately I have to agree.
I think one of the problems with magic is that we as magicians and mentalists spend a lot of time thinking about what the audience never perceive. We are thinking less on what we want to communicate to the audience. Magic is very different from singing, acting and painting, but art is not different from art. Art has to communicate something.
But there are other kinds of entertainment than art forms like music, acting, or dancing. People can be entertained by a juggler or acrobat, and those kind of acts can contain drama; drama in the form of a performer struggling to succeed. Those are acts that display skill and entertain in that way, they can also contain art but they don't have to.
I think that a lot of magic fall into the trap of being a display of skill and not art. There are very skilled performers that can display this skill so that the audience is left with no other explanation than that it was done by magic. But there are also a lot of performers who will perform tricks that the audience will not be able to explain, though they will know that it is not magic. I believe that these “tricks” are mostly performed as a display of skill and even some of the “magic” is a display of skill rather than art.
So what defines a great artist? I don't have the answer but I believe that at least one part of the answer is that a great artist do art because there is something that has to be said. A great artist do not do art to be seen. There is nothing wrong in itself in wanting to be seen and be on stage, but that will not produce art and definitely not great art.
If your motivation is to be seen, magic might be one of the better options. To become an acrobat or juggler requires a lot of practice if you want to be tolerable, while magic only requires a lot of practice in case you want to be really good. Magic is in its nature a secret art, while everyone can see how juggler does what he does, and if he is successful or not, people are not able to judge magic as easily.
So I have to give the critics right in that magic is perfect for people who have no talent but want to be on stage. To be a good juggler, singer or actor you have either to practice more and/or be better at communicating your emotions to an audience. As a magician you can much easier fake skill, that is after all what it is all about.
But is it true that magicians talk about art rather than do art? I think this is true as well. The ability to brake the laws of nature is from a dramatic perspective immensely strong, it will produce a feeling of astonishment more than any other art form is capable of. But why? I don't think many magicians are trying to say something about the world or try to open up their hart to the audience. This is what art is about, to communicate something. I think that we need to communicate something more than the moment of astonishment if we want magic to be an art.
Many magicians feel that what we do deserves to be an art, but very few seem to think about what they want to say. We want people to experience the moment of astonishment and resign to the obvious fact that magic is an art just because we magicians believe this moment to be something inherently beautiful.
So we talk about how what we do is an art, and we talk among ourselves about how we create this moment of astonishment. Because we want to create astonishment we often talk about the things that the audience will never see, that which we use to create this feeling of wonder. We choreograph movements in detail to create an illusion but spend little time trying to create an emotion. We create scripts that will hide manipulation but not always convey a massage.
It does not have to be this way but the fact is that although magic is an easy way to get on stage it is a very hard way to create art. A singer will have to practice a lot to be good but will have little problem to create art.
So what they say about magic is probably true, it is true because magic is easy if you want to get on stage, and magic is very hard if you want to create art.
Unfortunately I have to agree.
I think one of the problems with magic is that we as magicians and mentalists spend a lot of time thinking about what the audience never perceive. We are thinking less on what we want to communicate to the audience. Magic is very different from singing, acting and painting, but art is not different from art. Art has to communicate something.
But there are other kinds of entertainment than art forms like music, acting, or dancing. People can be entertained by a juggler or acrobat, and those kind of acts can contain drama; drama in the form of a performer struggling to succeed. Those are acts that display skill and entertain in that way, they can also contain art but they don't have to.
I think that a lot of magic fall into the trap of being a display of skill and not art. There are very skilled performers that can display this skill so that the audience is left with no other explanation than that it was done by magic. But there are also a lot of performers who will perform tricks that the audience will not be able to explain, though they will know that it is not magic. I believe that these “tricks” are mostly performed as a display of skill and even some of the “magic” is a display of skill rather than art.
So what defines a great artist? I don't have the answer but I believe that at least one part of the answer is that a great artist do art because there is something that has to be said. A great artist do not do art to be seen. There is nothing wrong in itself in wanting to be seen and be on stage, but that will not produce art and definitely not great art.
If your motivation is to be seen, magic might be one of the better options. To become an acrobat or juggler requires a lot of practice if you want to be tolerable, while magic only requires a lot of practice in case you want to be really good. Magic is in its nature a secret art, while everyone can see how juggler does what he does, and if he is successful or not, people are not able to judge magic as easily.
So I have to give the critics right in that magic is perfect for people who have no talent but want to be on stage. To be a good juggler, singer or actor you have either to practice more and/or be better at communicating your emotions to an audience. As a magician you can much easier fake skill, that is after all what it is all about.
But is it true that magicians talk about art rather than do art? I think this is true as well. The ability to brake the laws of nature is from a dramatic perspective immensely strong, it will produce a feeling of astonishment more than any other art form is capable of. But why? I don't think many magicians are trying to say something about the world or try to open up their hart to the audience. This is what art is about, to communicate something. I think that we need to communicate something more than the moment of astonishment if we want magic to be an art.
Many magicians feel that what we do deserves to be an art, but very few seem to think about what they want to say. We want people to experience the moment of astonishment and resign to the obvious fact that magic is an art just because we magicians believe this moment to be something inherently beautiful.
So we talk about how what we do is an art, and we talk among ourselves about how we create this moment of astonishment. Because we want to create astonishment we often talk about the things that the audience will never see, that which we use to create this feeling of wonder. We choreograph movements in detail to create an illusion but spend little time trying to create an emotion. We create scripts that will hide manipulation but not always convey a massage.
It does not have to be this way but the fact is that although magic is an easy way to get on stage it is a very hard way to create art. A singer will have to practice a lot to be good but will have little problem to create art.
So what they say about magic is probably true, it is true because magic is easy if you want to get on stage, and magic is very hard if you want to create art.
Thursday, 24 January 2013
Academia
I might have said it before, indeed I am sure that I have, but maybe not here in my blog.
”I love academia”
Today I was fortunate enough to attend a lecture where I learned loads of new stuff (new to me that is) about the Greek bronze age.
I am attending a course about ancient temples and cult places. For me it is basically because I want to learn more about the oracles during this time. But in the process I am picking up all kinds of interesting facts. Like that the word ”labyrinth” might be derived from the word for double axe ”labys”. The people at Knossos apparently liked carving double axes on the walls.
I also learned that the suffix ”-unda” or ”-anda” in Swedish, as found in names of places like Bergunda, have the meaning ”rich in”. So i.e. Bergunda is rich in ”berg”, have a lot of mountains. And I learned this because the same suffix was used 600 B.C. in present day Turkey.
As if that wasn't enough I had another course beginning yesterday about the scientific cultures of knowledge which is a course in the field of history of science and ideas. I think that course will be very interesting because we had a great discussion, not so much about what science is (which you talk about in philosophy) but how science and knowledge has been perceived throughout time and in different cultures.
It is so invigorating to meet new knowledge and new ideas. It is almost so that I forget how much more there is that I will never have time to learn in this life.
”I love academia”
Today I was fortunate enough to attend a lecture where I learned loads of new stuff (new to me that is) about the Greek bronze age.
I am attending a course about ancient temples and cult places. For me it is basically because I want to learn more about the oracles during this time. But in the process I am picking up all kinds of interesting facts. Like that the word ”labyrinth” might be derived from the word for double axe ”labys”. The people at Knossos apparently liked carving double axes on the walls.
I also learned that the suffix ”-unda” or ”-anda” in Swedish, as found in names of places like Bergunda, have the meaning ”rich in”. So i.e. Bergunda is rich in ”berg”, have a lot of mountains. And I learned this because the same suffix was used 600 B.C. in present day Turkey.
As if that wasn't enough I had another course beginning yesterday about the scientific cultures of knowledge which is a course in the field of history of science and ideas. I think that course will be very interesting because we had a great discussion, not so much about what science is (which you talk about in philosophy) but how science and knowledge has been perceived throughout time and in different cultures.
It is so invigorating to meet new knowledge and new ideas. It is almost so that I forget how much more there is that I will never have time to learn in this life.
Sunday, 20 January 2013
Inspiration
Yesterday I went to an inspiration day hosted by the aid organisation Diakonia. To be fare I mostly went because my father who is an activist persuaded me to come so that we could do something together. But all the same the day was not completely wasted from an inspirational point of view. I don't think that I will start to work with international aid just yet but it was interesting to get to meet so many engaging and active people.
From the speakers I found two quite interesting. David Orlic talking about his thoughts about the way to use Internet in campaigns and how successful campaigns work. Unfortunately there is quite a step to go from an analysis of how successful campaigns work to how you construct a successful campaign. The claim that you do not need money to create a successful campaign is true but I doubt that it implies that money can't buy you better chances to have a successful campaign.
We got to hear about the ideas that one should try to go from talk to action, message to news, and from audience to participants. You also have to fit your launch to what he described as the cultural calender. Over all it was an interesting talk and you might actually have heard of one of his accomplishments. The very strange idea that the Swedish government should give up their twitter account to more or less random Swedish people for a week each, made it to news media in China and the US. In the US it was mentioned in the New York Times and the Colbert Report. (The following interview with Paul Krugman is also worth watching.) Although I guess that of those two it was only the New York Times that wrote something about what the campaign was about, getting people to notice that Sweden is a progressive country.
The talk also put a lot on stress on who the audience trust and I came to think of the old saying “What the audience wants is sincerity, once you can fake that you got it.” Though David did not recommend that you try and fake it.
The other speaker was one of the entertainers, a guy with really good material in a mix of stand-up, spoken word, and songs. His name is Emil Jensen if you have an opportunity to see him, do that!
From the speakers I found two quite interesting. David Orlic talking about his thoughts about the way to use Internet in campaigns and how successful campaigns work. Unfortunately there is quite a step to go from an analysis of how successful campaigns work to how you construct a successful campaign. The claim that you do not need money to create a successful campaign is true but I doubt that it implies that money can't buy you better chances to have a successful campaign.
We got to hear about the ideas that one should try to go from talk to action, message to news, and from audience to participants. You also have to fit your launch to what he described as the cultural calender. Over all it was an interesting talk and you might actually have heard of one of his accomplishments. The very strange idea that the Swedish government should give up their twitter account to more or less random Swedish people for a week each, made it to news media in China and the US. In the US it was mentioned in the New York Times and the Colbert Report. (The following interview with Paul Krugman is also worth watching.) Although I guess that of those two it was only the New York Times that wrote something about what the campaign was about, getting people to notice that Sweden is a progressive country.
The talk also put a lot on stress on who the audience trust and I came to think of the old saying “What the audience wants is sincerity, once you can fake that you got it.” Though David did not recommend that you try and fake it.
The other speaker was one of the entertainers, a guy with really good material in a mix of stand-up, spoken word, and songs. His name is Emil Jensen if you have an opportunity to see him, do that!
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