Happy Leap Day from SoMA!
Happy Leap Day from SoMA!
Also Belated Happy New Year & International Magician's Day
Hi all- Happy Leap Day! Certainly a 366th day that vanishes and reappears on the calendar is a magic adjacent holiday? Hope everyone’s past few months have passed as excellently as possible. This is our first newsletter of the New Year (so also belated Happy New Year!). Our big announcement for 2024 is that we have now officially finalized the date and venue for our next international conference! The SoMA 2024 International Conference will be taking place Nov 12-13, 2024 at the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas. Vegas being one of the performance magic capitals of the world, we’re really excited by the possibilities, and I very much look forward to announcing more details soon! The plan is to have an event that’s similar in structure to our previous conferences in London and Chicago- two days of presentations, performances, and panel discussions, with a gala show. So, for now, please mark your calendars and stay tuned for more registration details.
And, in the meantime, here’s some SoM-related news! New papers, a scholarship opportunity, a podcast, and potentially even a bit of audience participation, if you’re game.
Best wishes,
Matt Tompkins
(On Behalf of the SoMA Committee)
SoMA 2024 in Las Vegas
We are delighted to announce that the 4th (semi) biannual SoMA international conference will be taking place on November 12-13, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event will take place at the Golden Nugget Casino, bringing together academics, researchers, and magicians from around the world and featuring top keynote speakers, presentations on recent research, a poster session, and a gala show.
We’ll be announcing more info soon, including our call presentation proposals and registration details both through this newsletter and via our website. But in the meantime, please do mark your calendars!
Happy International Magicians’ Day
I realize this is a bit late to be wishing folks a Happy New Year, but on the topic of belated holidays, I’d also like draw your attention to another magical day that passed between these newsletters: Jan 31st was/is ‘International Magicians Day.’ Believe it or not, it marks the feast day of St. John Bosco a Roman Catholic Priest and patron saint of magicians, who was known for incorporating tricks into his sermons- Gospel Magic-style. Somewhat confusingly, he’s also alleged to have been responsible for several ‘genuine’ (i.e. officially Church approved) miracles: dictating prophesies, restoring sight to the blind, causing the lame to walk, even raising the dead (hence the canonization). He also allegedly survived multiple assassination attempts from freemasons- interesting guy!
PhD Scholarship for Performance Magic
The School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Huddersfield are currently advertising for a PhD position that will be focus on magic. Potential Research areas include performance practices of conjuring and illusion, applied magic, magic and the digital, magic and the body, the magician as character, archetype or trope. The project will be supervised by Dr. Nik Taylor, and the closing date for applications is 7 June. 2024. For more info on the project and how to apply click HERE
New Paper on Adapting Magic Tricks for Non-Visual Formats
A team of researchers led by Vebjørn Ekroll have published a new paper exploring how magic tricks can be adapted to non-visual formats. They divided their participants into ‘seeing’ and ‘blindfolded’ groups and presented them with a variety of topological, and mentalism style tricks, some of which were specifically adapted for the blindfolded group. Participants than rated their experiences of the tricks in terms of how magical they perceived them to be and what they thought the secret methods might be. They conclude that not only do their methods present an interesting avenue for adapting traditionally visual tricks for non-sighted and partially sighted audiences, but also have some interesting implications for the way cognitive scientists think about mental imagery. You can read the full paper HERE
New Paper on Magic in Medicine
Xiang-Chi Wu and co-authors have published an interesting new review on the clinical applications of magic- provides a interesting overview of various topics including dexterity training, divergent thinking, clinical rapport, as well as occupational, psychological, and physical therapies.
You can read the full paper HERE
SoM on BBC’s The Infinite Monkey Cage
BBC’s ‘The Infinite Monkey Cage,’ a podcast hosted by Brian Cox and Robin Ince, recently aired a discussion on the science and psychology of performance magic. It features a panel consisting of comedian Alan Davies, sleight-of-hand artist Laura London, along with psychologists Gustav Kuhn and Richard Wiseman. Nice discussions of childhood magic experiences, practice, perception, and secrecy.
You can listen to the whole episode HERE
New Publication: A Review of Comparative Cognition & Magic Research
A new review paper has been published by Elias Garcia-Pelegrin and colleagues. The paper provides a lovely overview of the some classic aspects of science of magic history while focusing on the recent line of research that uses magic to explore cognition in nonhuman animals. You can read the full paper HERE
Calling Magicians to Participate in New Survey Research from the Magic Lab
Our first bit of audience participation- this one is for practicing magicians: Prahlad Saldanha and Gustav Kuhn of the Magic Lab are currently seeking magician participants to complete a survey for a project on expertise. The survey takes about 10 minutes to complete, it helps out with some cool research, and you can also see how you score in magic expertise according to the current version of the questionnaire.
Calling Educators and Science Communicators Who Use Magic as a Teaching Tool
And last but not least, our second bit of audience participation, this one’s for anyone who’s ever adapted magic as a teaching tool. We’re looking to compile a resource for educators and presenters on different ways that magic can be effectively integrated into classroom settings. If you have your own syllabus or lesson idea that you’d be willing to publicly share please get in touch!
More details HERE, along with some examples to get things started