Magical Musings: Issue IV - The Magic of Communication – Part 1

The Magic of Communication – Part 1

Remaining in context with the seminar on “Magic as a medium of environmental awareness” conducted at the Magic Academy, let me share some thoughts.

I remain fascinated with the concept of using magic as a medium to communicate messages of social relevance. Most have heard me on this. Every effort to this end interests me greatly, and so did the presentations by magicians at the seminar.

Many good communicative and educative acts are presented by magicians, utilising patter effects. And these are generally quite effective.

In most of these presentations, a magical effect is used as a visual cue to corroborate (support) the “speech” of the magician. Yes! It does make the speech interesting and entertaining, and thereby educating. But the essence of the communication lies in the patter, and not in the effect per se.

The speech gains more importance than the communicative abilities of the effect, which is used simply as a visually appealing presentation tool. The comprehension of the verbal message is important and integral, if anybody is to understand the message.

Here, magic (the medium) suffers from the same demographic barriers like language, as suffered by all the other communication media like TV, Cinema, et al. For example, if the audience misses the verbal association of a green silk to earth, and a brown silk to biodegradable waste, they only see and perceive a magic trick where a brown silk vanishes into a green silk.

An otherwise excellent message is lost out on them, due to their inability to comprehend the language or the inability to follow what is being said (the ‘noise’ factor).

The efficiency of this message may be increased manifold by using magic per se as a medium for visual communication, and using patter as a corroborative tool. For example, if the green silk had an image of the earth drawn on it, while the other silk depicted biodegradable waste, the message becomes visual!

The message is communicated to all and sundry, including those that could not hear or follow the verbal message, which remains secondary to the visual message. And herein lies the secret of using magic as an effective medium of communication.

To be continued…

Published in VMN: June 15, 2005