Seminar: Interactivos? 2007. Technology and Magic (white or black?)

PROGRAMME

Friday 25th

17:30h Presentation

17:45h Antonio Lafuente: Science and Stage Shows: Spaces, Practices, and Actors in the Early Enlightenment

18:45h Francisco J. Rubia: Cerebral Fictions

19:45h Miguel Ángel Gea: Great illusions of antiquity

Saturday 26th

11:00h Nuria Valverde: The Naked Eye: Magic and Visual Evidence in 19th Century Science.

12:00h Miguel Ángel García: The imagination of magic in images

13:00h Luis Navarro: Magic, Spells, and Tricks: On the Place of Magic in the Age of Technology

17:00h Jorge Luis Marzo: Transparency and illusion

18:00h Ignacio García Hernando: Observation in Magic through Technological Myths

19:00h Stuart Nolan: Magic and Deconstructionist Learning

Antonio Lafuente: Science and Stage Shows: Spaces, Practices, and Actors in the Early Enlightenment

Modern science, more or less as we know it today, is an historical endeavour; that is, it has a beginning and perhaps also an expiry date. We know that experimental facts, that novel combination of machines and practices, appeared in the field of knowledge in the late 17th Century. The mere appearance of instruments, however, offered no guarantees and even less did the assertions based on artificial facts originating from laboratories. The opposite was more the case, as those educated in traditional cognitive ways characteristic of university rhetoric did not know how to distinguish between a magician and a scientist.

The credibility of modern science was therefore associated to putting into practice new ways of garnering public support. Various formulas were attempted and we will pay special attention to those that were able to invent audiences for science. The relationship between science and stage shows, far from being a contingent one, became structural. It forms part of the base of the success achieved by science as a public endeavour which is therefore political. Experiments then turned into performances that appealed to members of Europe's lesser aristocrats and artisans, fostering unexpected connections between elite culture and the urban bourgeoisie.

Francisco J. Rubia: Cerebral Fictions

"The brain is not a passive organ that receives information from the sense organs. Instead, perception itself is influenced by the brain and external reality is no more than a cerebral creation based on different types of energy that act on the sense organs. Therefore, colors and flavors do not exist, nor do smells, cold, or heat. They are all produced by the brain. It is as if the brain projected onto the exterior a virtual reality film that we experience as if it was real. In this sense, modern neuroscience approaches what German philosopher Immanuel Kant said long ago: "We can never know things as they really are because we always observe them through the lens of the brain."

The Self is another cerebral fiction which is not located anywhere in the brain. Instead, it is a creation of the brain which lends continuity to our personality, generating the illusion of something that lasts over the course of our entire lives. Recent discoveries indicate that free will is probably yet one more fiction and that the brain is no exception to the rest of the universe and consequently, it is subject to nature's deterministic laws.

These are all the results of research in neuroscience which mean an end to the dualism that separated the mind from the brain, or the soul from the body in past eras, and which has persisted to the present day. Proof that we have overcome that dualism is evident in research showing that spirituality, experiences of ecstasy, and similar phenomena can be provoked by stimulating certain areas of the brain".

Miguel Ángel Gea: Great Illusions of Antiquity

Before magic was considered either black or white, or divided into additional categories, there was a time when magicians’ secret knowledge was used to create powers where there were none and fascination for dead matter. Today that knowledge is used for entertainment and our artistic outlook has changed. This talk will take a quick look at different cultures where the same secret knowledge was seen in different ways and used by charlatans, inventors, shamans, architects, physicists, and magicians, of course.

Nuria Valverde: The Naked Eye: Magic and Visual Evidence in 19th Century Science.

During the 18th Century, magic became an essential part of promoting scientific knowledge. Tricks based on contemplating physical effects that transformed the everyday properties of objects became a part of social life and sparked imagination. In the late 1700s, the development of optical effects and the uncertainty arising from observing nature (e.g. directing lightning produced by a storm and the accuracy of astronomical observations) motivated a change: magic and science began to feed on the obsession of for man as the location of experience. Attention focused on varieties of sensation, the inner workings of behaviour, and the limits of language and perception. One of the consequences of this shift was an inverse connection between observation and suggestion. The greater the degree of suggestion, the poorer was the ability to observe. This discovery, which in time would serve to explain illusionism and the reception to art in general, had unquestionable political implications. The opposite phenomenon (that is, whether attentive observation minimizes the degree of suggestion) entailed other difficulties, that were not as obvious and harder to instrumentalise. This presentation will explore some of the difficulties, anchored at the intersection between science and magic, which arose upon attempts to systematically analyze and also make visible the frontiers between fiction and reality.

Miguel Ángel García: The imagination of magic in images

Since the times of Plinius, that is, the origins of art history, the limits between magic and image have been confusing and unstable, both changing positions endlessly. Most myths about how art was founded insist on its magic capacity, some more effectively or violently than others, from Zeuxis painting grapes so real birds would try to eat them, thus being deceived, to Pygmalion begging the gods to bring his statue to life. What is happening in all these tales, and in many other cultural traditions to come, beyond the supposed invention of the "form" with which modern historiography tried to invent the origin of "art", other than the omnipotent presence of art as magic and the artist as magician? Therefore, the history of art unquestionably arose to cleanse art of its magic capacity. Or else to keep secret the scandalous fact that what we live with daily is not image but rather magic. This is the discourse-broom that sweeps up all the leftover waste of "rational" discourse. But this garbage ends up prevailing, seeing the light, in a less pleasant way than we would think, in David, Goya, Picasso, Freud or Bataille.

Luis Navarro: MAGIC, SPELLS, AND TRICKS. The Place of Magic in the Age of Technology

"There must have been a time when all human situations took place in an environment we could classify as "magic". The way a child sees, experiences, and understands the world reproduces this same structure. Since a child does not yet possess firm, regular criteria as the basis for the contents of experience, everything appears wonderful, constantly escaping from any causal link and its fragile preconceptions. And the explanation for all things must be sought in "another” world, given that there is no "this” world to serve as a reference. When "this world" begins to take definite shape, with limits, revealing a disenchanted countenance subject to norms and resistance, then the necessity or dream of breaking down its logic arises in the individual, the desire to transcend, to produce miracles and wonders in a way that the individual can act on the world and control it.

There is a certain continuity between the longing for power in this disenchanted magic mentality, which insists on not letting nature or people follow their natural course, and the miracle realized by technology, so much so that it has absorbed our entire capacity to be amazed and believe. But to make that possible, our experience has suffered a certain loss of illusions, ritually relegated to the stage as illusionism, given that we understand that, deep down, everything is just a simple trick".

Jorge Luis Marzo: Transparence and illusion

Magic is based on the idea that the audience is not allowed to see the trick. That's what ensures its success. This idea is also based on the fact that if the spectator knew or saw the trick, the whole show would disappear. Magic only shows results, not their sources. Visual reproduction technology created in the 19th century under the cover of illusionism and phantasmagoria was seen by society in terms of concealment and excessive secrecy. This is still the case today: the first Kodak camera in the early 20th century and Windows 95 software used the same advertising slogan: “You just push the button; we’ll do the rest".

So that this projection is socially accepted and spread, the public manifestation of possessing a secret should paradoxically be accompanied by calls to transparency, simplicity, and the common good. The most obvious case are Cabinet ministers’ deliberations: the ministers are sworn to absolute secrecy about every word said. Meanwhile, governments make unflagging efforts to announce and disseminate those same results, making them clear and easy to understand.

At present, while low-cost digital technology is self-managed and its results are freely transmitted on the web, the media and the entertainment industry are creating a discourse based on the transparency of mechanisms: reality shows, “The Making Of”, false takes, hidden cameras, advertising infiltrated but camouflaged in different contexts and settings, security cameras in police stations that not even the police know about, security cameras, etc. All of it can be understood as a great mixture of illusionists’ tricks: the trick only works if everything seems “just as natural as can be”.

Ignacio García Hernando: Magic observed through technological myths

An analysis of the role of technological myths in magic play. From magicians’ inclusion of technological references to add credence and coherence to their gestures, to audiences’ turning to technological ideas to fill the vacuum when the causality principle is shattered by magical effects.

Stuart Nolan: Magic and Deconstructionist Learning

The word magical is much used when praising a broad range of creative works including fine art, film, fashion, architecture, TV and digital games.

Bruce Tognazzini has argued that knowledge of “the principles, techniques and ethics of magic” are invaluable in software design, suggesting that software designers should study the literature of illusion design, the performances of master magicians and also practice the techniques of conjuring in order to improve their design process.

In August 2006 at The Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory (TML) in Helsinki, a group of software designers, game designers and media producers explored this advice through a week-long workshop led by Stuart Nolan.

This workshop explored how the practice of conjuring can play a part in the creative technology design process and examined the relationships between: magic, interactive storytelling, game design and user centred design; calm technology, misdirection and the psychology of attention; Disney’s weenies, game world design, and stage illusions; optical conjuring, visualization technologies, and vanishing an elephant; off-beats, video editing and the psychology of rhythm; character animation, natural movement and guilt; affordances, inner scripts, and anthropomorphism; psychological suggestion, equivoque and interface design; play, the illusion of choice and multiple outs; pacing, time misdirection and communication technologies; futurology, disruptive innovation and the technomagical.

Issues of software design, HCI, disruptive innovation, play, video editing and manipulation, animation and game design were explored, key conjuring skills and effects demonstrated and case studies presented.

This presentation will discuss key learning from this, and other shorter workshops with technologists, media producers and game designers.