Magical Musings: Issue V - The Magic of Communication – Part 2

The Magic of Communication – Part 2

Continuing where I left off in the last article, we saw many good presentations by magicians and environmentalists at the Seminar; each act sought to communicate the importance of a clean, green environment. The only shortcoming, if any, was that most communicated verbally.

The need of the hour as they say is to find a medium that can communicate to one and all, irrespective of barriers of language, education, demographical and cultural differences. And Magic has the powers to play this role, in the same way that it entertains all and sundry, age and language being no barrier.

The secret as I tipped in the last article is to make the presentations more, or entirely, visual. In other words, they should work effectively as silent acts.

Don’t get me wrong. The idea is NOT to perform silent acts, but to design magical presentations that are so powerful that people understand the message even when they do not understand the patter.

Let me present an example:

Explaining how one should manage different kinds of waste, the magician takes some plastic waste and puts them down a tube (Botania) stuck with a sticker symbolising earth. The plastic waste just passes right through the tube. Now some bio-degradable waste (banana peels?) is put down the same tube. The tube is lifted to show flowers!

The plastic and paper-based waste is put into another vessel (Sugar to Candy) bearing the Recycle symbol. With a proper recycling process (the lid is closed and opened out), the crushed plastic is seen to have transformed into a new cup, and the paper into a usable product.

The magician closes by speaking of the non-recyclable and hazardous products like battery cells, CDs, etc that need to be disposed in a proper way. (He puts it into another vessel bearing the markings of hazardous material, and vanishes the same!)

The difference between the silk-magic explained last time and this one is very slight: This act will communicate even when no word is spoken. And herein lies the true power of magic to communicate. Let’s use it!

Published in VMN: July 20, 2005