This time round my brain has been much better at grasping a lot of the details that passed me by before. Illusions are not my area of expertise. As such - it has been an interesting challenge studying this area of magic. Steinmeyer's work has really made Jarrett's magic come alive for me. He did a great job with this legendary book.
One of my favourite tricks in the book is the Twenty One Person Cabinet Production. It makes for quite a practical illusion. You can see Doug Henning perform it here. There are no camera tricks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkV34rtGzqI
Steinmeyer provides a nice twist to the Jarrett original. The Cabinet apparently produces 22(!) people in the video above. As the cabinet is opened up for the final production - one of the cheerleaders goes round the back and sneaks back into the cabinet.
I am looking forward to playing around with Guy Jarrett's clever coin vanish that makes use of a hooked coin. And there are a few other things in there that I am looking forward to studying further with my next read through of the book. I would also love to see a performance of his Bangkok Bungalow illusion. The thinking behind this is diabolical. It is as if Paul Harris designed an illusion.
I was really intrigued to see Jarrett's Whirling Car Tyre effect described in the book. It is an incredible trick and the secret is wonderfully offbeat. It is like something Lubor Fiedler would come up with. The strange thing with this trick is that Theodore Deland also came up with the same method. In his trick he uses it to float a skeleton. I prefer the version by Jarrett though. Still - the Deland effect will be one of the highlights in the upcoming Kaufman book.
In some of the back issues of GENII, I read that an artist called Doug Young put together the Jarrett Whirling Car Tyre illusion. It was demonstrated at the 2009 Los Angeles Conference on Magic History. It also featured at the 2010 'Magic: The Science of Wonder' exhibition at the Houston Museum of Natural Wonder that Richard Hatch performed at.
I contacted the artist and he sent me a link to a video of the trick:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BFdxg2lOC12/?taken-by=dougyoungalive
It is interesting to hear how loud the illusion is. It adds a weird touch to the overall effect. The tyre is spinning in space with no visible means of support. Also - you can blow smoke through the center of the tyre as well, to show there is no support there either.
Magic tricks that can and standalone and demonstrate an impossible effect without the presence of a magician is a big passion of mine. You rarely see this sort of thing in magic. [1]
Doug mentioned that he exhibited the trick before the rise of smartphones. But since then - he has found that the flash from a smartphone camera will give away the secret. It is one of those odd problems that would have been unimaginable when Guy Jarrett first invented it.
Here are some other things Doug had to say about his experiences putting together this wonderful trick:
I didn't have the money to do too much experimenting, so I just dove in and built something similar to the design in the book.
I did change a few things. First the tires back in Jarrett's time were much lighter than they are today, and I knew this was a problem, so I made my tire out of paper. As you may have seen I am an artist, so making a believable fake tire was not hard.
What was hard was the wire. Jarrett says he used fine metal wire, and I lost track of how many different wires I tried. All of them broke so I switched to mono filament and that worked nicely.
Second I do not work with metal, so the interior hoops and pulleys are all made out of wood which I believe led to the work being much louder than I would have liked.
Third Jarrett had his motor mounted off to the side running the the main pulley with a drive belt, out of space concerns I just had my motor directly connected to the main pulley (like a fan motor), again I believe this lead to a lot of distracting noise.
If I was to remake this my main focus would be on noise reduction.
Here is a link to the artist's website. He lives in New York.
http://dougyoungalive.com/
I have also looked in to Jim Steinmeyer's work as a Disney Imagineer (the creative team who work for Disney). Jim added a nice illusion touch to the Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin ride. It occurs at the end of the ride. Ahead of the ride - is a wall with no exit for the train to pass through. But not to worry - Roger Rabbit moves a giant portable hole over the wall - to allow the train to pass through.
Just like in the movie.
https://youtu.be/X7KbvDaFnZk?t=5m23s
Bravo once again to Jim Steinmeyer! Other than Richard Kaufman - I cannot think of anybody else who has given so much back to the magic community.
Joe Mckay
[1] The recent Gaetan Bloom book has some nice examples of standalone magic tricks. And Lubor Fiedler's ingenious Phantom Clock from Tenyo has always been a favourite of mine. You can see it here:
https://youtu.be/jGRkxS-aLqg?t=1m14s
Along similar lines is the interactive 'Magic Show' book by Mark Setteducati:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o7N0W9oqm0