Day 6 - 13. 6. 2015

[Ondřej Pšenička]

The first Saturday in Stockholm. I got up at 10:30, and was in school at 11:00.

On the way to school I changed my idea from yesterday for our next week’s topic “motion and stillness” from not moving and standing still and having my glasses or parts of my costume move, to a similar but still very different one. I’m going to be laying on the table on my back not moving the entire time, having a doll or any toy jumping all over me performing get-sharky with the final revelation in my mouth. There is a nice doll at DOCH that could possibly work, but I’d rather get a hand-puppet.

I haven’t done much practical stuff at the school, just extended our stay at Rimini for one day so we’ll be there on time for Aleš’s rehearsal.

Then I walked to the Magic Bar where only Arne and Robert were having coffee in front of the Bar. I turned out that Robert is the host of the lecture and that he has traveled Europe busking with a rope routine, something that I don’t remember, and bill in lemon.

Then a Swedish magician came his name was Per and I immediately suspected that he was the one trying to find out information about this Louis magician from Prague performing in Sweden couple of months ago. It was indeed him. So we chatted about history and I started about epitome and Lorayne and Fulves and Randi and he pointed me toward conjuringcredits.com which I didn’t know about. It’s also created by Denis Behr.

It says that Luca Pacioli described the idea of clocking the deck as problem 21 in his Perugia manuscript in 1478. The first mention in English was in 1630 in a book by Thomas Johnson called Dainty Conceits.

I also met there the brothers we met in Lund so many years ago with Martin. One of the brothers even remembered me doing clocking - I barely remembered HIM! Anyway, that was nice.

Then David Sousa’s lecture started. It was very interesting. The way he uses black art seems to be very useful. I also made about three notes: I liked how he didn’t pay attention to the false transfer, but to the moment when he shows his hand empty. Then the fact that magnets are great to attach loads to the costume in servants. I also got this idea when he talked about blackening the edges of playing cards - when preparing “unshuffled” to write on the edge with pencil first and then, one by one mark the cards with Sharpie over the pencil marks. David Sousa by the way can be genuinely funny.

Then I went home, thought about the week theme some more, went to a toy store with Erik, they didn’t have hand puppets, I didn’t really like any of the animals so I decided to make one myself.

At home I watched Science Friction DVD2, and found most of the effects weak in design. Some could be probably improved. Denis Behr’s idea how to spray it on cards for the invisible deck might be the best thing on the DVD.