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"Illusion"
“Alice laughed: ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said; ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’ ‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’” –Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass [...]
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There is something that touches the emotions about the Nike Mayfly, a £25 ultra-lightweight, professional running shoe designed to last just 100km. Is it the sad beauty of brevity? Is it the sense of concentrated purpose? Is it the highlighted feeling of time passing? Is it the fun of destroying something slowly through running? (I [...]
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The aged catch their breath, For the nonchalant couple go Waltzing across the tightrope As if there were no death Or hope of falling down; The wounded cry as the clown Doubles his meaning, and O How the dear little children laugh When the drums roll and the lovely Lady is sawn in half. (W. [...]
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One of the most interesting ideas in advertising over the last decade has been Jean-Marie Dru’s concept of Disruption. Dru is Chairman of TBWA Worldwide, one of the largest agencies in the world and 24th on Fast Company Magazine’s 2009 list of The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies. Dru’s Disruption is easy to describe in [...]
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I have to admit that I have selfish reasons for being glad that the book Sleights of Mind by Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde is such a well written and researched piece of work. It makes me foolishly happy to know that there are others out there who are excited by what we can learn [...]
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The title quote is from The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde but like many of my generation I first heard it from Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of suspense recently as I prepare a Designing Mystery workshop for The University of Salford. I went back [...]
Continue Reading →I’m reading the work of Robert Kurzban, an Associate Professor of Psychology who has written about hypocrisy. He argues that we are capable of believing contradictory things because we are like iPhones. Our brains are made of lots of specialized “Apps” that are good at doing one thing really well. Its perfectly possible for the [...]
Continue Reading →This is an elegant demonstration of a principle that is well known in certain areas of magic and illusion design. Play the movie while looking at the small white speck in the center of the ring. Try to keep looking at the white speck. Motion silences awareness of color changes from Jordan Suchow on Vimeo. [...]
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This article was commissioned for the NESTA Inspire Me collection some years back. I’m just re-reading Feynman and thinking about how our education system will deal with the cuts to both Arts and Science and thought I’d post it. Richard P. Feynman, one of the great physicists and communicators of science of the twentieth century, [...]
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