SoMA June Newsletter & Conference Updates
SoMA June Newsletter & Conference Updates
Hello, Hope everyone’s respective summers are off to excellent starts!
The main purpose of this newsletter is to provide some exciting new updates on our upcoming 2024 conference. We’ve got an excellent line-up of invited speakers so far: Our keynote speakers will include Prof. Chris Goto-Jones, author of Conjuring Asia, and Prof. Thalia Goldstein, author of the upcoming book, Why Theatre Education Matters, along with multi-award winning comedy entertainer and magician Carisa Hendrix. There will also be a special symposium with Jeff McBride and the Magic & Mystery School. And we are delighted to announce that the legendary magician Teller will be attending as our Guest of Honor.
The registration portal for the conference is now open and, for a limited time, we are offering an early registration discount: $250 USD for a two day pass. Registration rates will be increasing after Aug 13 (to $300 USD). Discounted student rates are also available. Hope to see many of you in Vegas! (And please do share this info with anyone who you think might be interested)
You can find links and more details below, along with some recent SoM news: animal magic, a new study on magic and emotion, an ‘auditory trick challenge’, and a medical case study of very non-magical needle swallowing.
Best,
Matt
On behalf of the SoMA Committee
The registration portal is now open for SoMA’s 2024 Conference!
Our 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.
Abstract Submission Deadline Has Been Extended to July 14
Given that it took slightly longer than expected to get the registration portal up and running, we’ve decided to extend the deadline for presentation proposals by a few extra weeks. (Thanks to everyone who’s already submitted proposals!)
You can find all the details for how to submit a proposal HERE
New Pop Science Article on Magic and Animal Cognition
Betsy Mason has recently a published a new article in Knowable Magazine on researchers using magic to study animal cognition. The piece is focused on the excellent work being conducted by Elias Garcia-Pelegrin, Nicola Clayton, and Clive Wilkins of the Cambridge Comparative Cognition Lab. And there’s even a nice little shoutout to the Science of Magic Association.
You can read the full piece HERE
New Paper on Magic & Emotion
Richard Wiseman (who recently received a David Attenborough Prize from the Royal Society for his fantastic work as a science communicator) and Caroline Watt have recently co-authored an empirical paper on the topic of magic and emotional experiences.
You can read the full study HERE
Announcing the Auditory Trick Challenge
Can magic truly be witnessed through the ears alone? This challenge aims to find out. The Magic Lab is currently holding a contest for designers to develop tricks that rely purely on sound (but not language). The deadline for submissions is 1 Oct 2024.
You can find full details and info how to enter the contest HERE
Needle Swallowing Magic ‘Trick’ ‘Advancing’ Medical Science
Last but not least: As many of you are aware, I try to maintain a running bibliography of published SoM research. I’m currently behind on updating my public list (hoping to make the next iteration into a more formally published paper), but I do still regularly monitor ongoing work. I wanted to share a slightly older paper that I stumbled across recently. While I don’t think it technically qualifies as an experiment, it does provide a very interesting case of a magician helping advance medical science. In 2019, a team of surgeons including Kota Tsuruya and colleagues published an interesting/horrifying case report on the “Successful combination of endoscopic and laparoscopic removal of multiple ingested needles” i.e. the removal of 7(!) sharp sewing needles that were embedded throughout the insides of an “amateur magician.” Fake needle swallowing is arguably classic of magic, and you can find written methods on how to produce the illusion dating back to at least the 19th century; it was a staple of Harry Houdini’s later acts, and below you can watch a recording of Teller, this year’s SoMA Conference Guest of Honor, successfully performing the trick at MIT back in back in 2015. Anyway, this particular case of an unsuccessful illusion/real needle swallowing apparently provided a very exciting challenge for a the team of endoscopists and surgeons, so much so that the team collectively wrote it up as publication (I should also note that, the patient, who provided permission for his case to be published, was ultimately OK).
You can read the full case study HERE