SoMA Newsletter July 2024
SoMA Newsletter July 2024
Deadline reminder, an interview series, and new articles on magic
Hi all,
The main purpose of this message is to remind everyone that the deadline for presentation proposals for our 2024 conference is fast approaching! If you’d like to submit something for the conference, just hit the button below to get started. You have until 14 July. (Thanks to everyone who’s already submitted!)
And, while I have your attention, I do have some more SoM-related news: We are very pleased to present an new interview series on the SoMA website. And I also wanted to let to you know about a couple of cool recent stories: One from in the New York Times about a history project being conducted by friend of SoMA, Richard Hatch, and one in Alta Journal about illusion designer John Gaughan.
Best Wishes,
Matt Tompkins
(On Behalf of the SoMA Committee)
New Interview Series on Magic and Misdirection
Magicians are a rich source of insights about psychology, particularly in the areas of attention and awareness. However, much information is passed on informally between magicians rather than being documented formally in writing. In order to try to capture some of this socially-disseminated information, a team of researchers led by SoMA’s Tony Barnhart carried out a series of interviews with acclaimed, expert magicians who think deeply about the techniques and meaning of their magic. They hope that these interviews will provide a source of new, testable hypotheses beyond those found in the magic theory literature.
The interviews were conducted as part of a a collaborative effort between Anthony Barnhart, Sarah Tuchel, Gustav Kuhn, and Daniel Simons. The interviewees include Jeanette Andrews, Joe Diamond, Carisa Hendrix, David Parr, Tom Stone, and Jamy Ian Swiss.
You can view all the interviews HERE (where full transcripts are also availalbe)
The first qualitative analysis from these interviews was presented at the 2023 joint workshop of the British Society of Aesthetics and the Science of Magic Association. A version of that presentation can be viewed below:
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NYT Article on Richard Hatch’s translation of Die Juden in der Zauberkunst
A recent article in the New York Times by David Segal details a fascinating story about Richard Hatch’s work translating Die Juden in der Zauberkunst [Jews in Magic] by Guenther Dammann. The article provides a bit of biographical info on Richard’s own journey from full-time academic physics to magic and details his work acting as “a one man historical preservation society” for the text.
You can view the full article HERE
A New Interview with Legendary Illusion Design John Gaughan
A news article on John Gughan was recently written by Anna Merlan and published in Alta Magazine. The piece describes a visit to John’s workshop and depicts some of his incredible automata collection (I’m personally a big fan of his Mechanical Turk reproduction).
You can read the full article HERE