very very well said thanks for sharing that quote

Pepka, I believe that the answer to your question is both yes and no. Some pay attention, some don't. However I have learned that remembering is different from paying attention. Suprisingly there is a lot of research on this subject, the tv show Brain Games is one. You can also learn a lot on games like Luminosity or Brain Age N3DS game.

Most of what they witness, the ones who pay attention, goes straight into their short term memories and only parts and pieces make it to long term - that's why they jumble them together.

Personal, emotional factors can cement more into the long term at times. I did an ACR to a young lady in a bar / restaurant years ago with her signed card. She was beyond words both scared and excited (may or may not have had to do with her deeply Catholic background) but nonetheless she LOVED the effect. When it was done, her husband, (sworn to secrecy) took the card home a secretly hid it under her bed pillow for her to find the next day and as a great partner/stooge flipped out right along with her. The story he told me about it later was priceless - she was so emotional she cried for almost a half hour and he kept the secret like a real trooper.

Now the kicker, 6 months later or so, she sees me in the mall with my wife and children. She frantically stops me, introduces herself to my wife and dumps her purse on a bench in the mall just to find the signed card she keeps with her always. Then she went on to tell a fairly accurate account of the ACR effect and how I somehow got it to her house and under her pillow for a kicker and a souvenir. This was possible because she had an emotional stake in it and she paid attention because she always wanted to debunk magic in general due to her strong Catholic beliefs and she had no ammo for this one.

The examples you give also happen to me WAY MORE OFTEN but I don't think its us as much as them and how the brain functions.

I have had the pleasure of watching live close up masters such as Dani Daortiz, Darwin Ortiz, Juan Tamariz, Michael Vincent, Pit Hartling, John Carney and Michael Ammar perform formal close up sets between 20 - 40 mins. And to be honest, I can barely remember one effect from each of the performers. I remember it vividly the tricks while they were performed, but 10-15 minutes after the set, I could barely recall the sequence of tricks that were done, a day later, I struggled to remember one effect, all vague. All I remember is that I got fooled something shocking for the whole time watching these guys....

I go to a rock concert of my favourite band, don't ask me to name the sequence that the songs were sang, cause I couldn't tell you. All I can probably tell you is 1) the songs that they didn't sing which I was expecting cause I was waiting the whole night for it, 2)the song they closed the set with 3) that I had a great time ( hopefully).

Our mind works in mysterious ways, this is from a guy that uses a memorised deck all the time! If my audience can walk away amazed, and more importantly had a great experience watching the magic at the time of performance, then hey, I have done my job!....Letting spectators keep certain souvenirs of the magic will certainly help them recall specific tricks you want them to walk away with


Btw Peka, you mentioned, "he same guy told me that I folded and put a signed card in the zipper in my wallet when "no one was looking. When was that? " When was that?"

But isn't that the correct solution? Give the guy credit for thinking of the most obvious solution to the effect....

I remember seeing a magician sitting in a bar on a cruise doing card trick after card trick. At the time, I wasn't interested in card tricks, but he blew me away and never realized how many amazing card tricks existed with a deck of cards. It was thanks to him that I got into cards. When I spoke to him afterwards about magic, I told him I never got into cards cause I didn't think there was that much that could be done, but he proved me wrong. He told me a lot of his material came from Card College and Royal Road To Card Magic. Well I've read these books and some of them more than once. Guess what? I couldn't tell you for the life of me which ones he did. All I remember is that I was blown away for 40 minutes.

Whenever a friend tells me that he/she saw a magician I always ask what the best item(s) they saw were. They always have two or three things to tell me. So people do remember some of the moments of magic. I don't think anyone has ever said "I can't remember anything he did." Often when a couple has seen a magician together, they jog each other's memories as they try to recall something amazing.

Mike

Probably better that they don't remember everything. Less chance of "reverse engineering"

Pep,

I don't know if spectators pay enough attention or if it's our magic that isn't noteworthy. It's a tough call.

I know that blaming the spectators, on any level, is wrong, dead wrong.

I think that another determinant factor in the recalling of a magic experience, especially card tricks, by laypeople is their lack of familiarity with the topic and lack of vocabulary to describe the experience. What looks like very different effects to our analytic magician eyes, may well look like an undifferentiated blob to our audience.

Imagine if you were to describe a piece of instrumental music you’d listen to. I have no doubts that my own efforts would “sound” pathetic to a musician.

The late, great Billy McComb felt that the audience could only remember one significant effect from a show. He’d spend 20 minutes getting the audience to like him with jokes, smaller tricks like the half-dyed hank, and other bits of business. Then, once they knew him and liked him, he’d fool them badly, often closing with a jaw-dropping performance of his slow-motion vanishing bird cage.

And once Billy had kicked ‘em in the teeth with this, he’d slowly amble off the stage, with a sly grin on his face.

The progress of the show went something like this:

“Who is that old codger?”
“Hey, he’s pretty funny, isn’t he?”
“That was a very funny and clever trick, wasn't it?”
“OH MY GOD! What the ?!”

I second Kent's message - "I know that blaming the spectators, on any level, is wrong, dead wrong."

Mike

Stage director Peter Brook believes that an audience will remember one image from a play, and will reconstruct events around it.

"When a performance is over, what remains? Fun can be forgotten, but powerful emotion also disappears and good arguments lose their thread. When emotion and argument are harnessed to a wish from the audience to see more clearly into itself—then something in the mind burns. The event scorches on to the memory an outline, a taste, a trace, a smell—a picture. It is the play’s central image that remains, its silhouette, and if the elements are rightly blended this silhouette will be its meaning, this shape will be the essence of what it has to say. When years later I think of a striking theatrical experience I find a kernel engraved on my memory: two tramps under a tree, an old woman dragging a cart, a sergeant dancing, three people on a sofa in hell—or occasionally a trace deeper than any imagery. I haven’t a hope of remembering the meanings precisely, but from the kernel I can reconstruct a set of meanings. Then a purpose will have been served. A few hours could amend my thinking for life. This is almost but not quite impossible to achieve."  - Peter Brook, The Empty Space, p.169.

Interestingly this is at odds with Maya Angelou, since Brook claims that audiences may very well forget how you made them feel, but may retain a striking image instead.

I don’t see how you draw that conclusion from that story. It sounds like he remembered Sam the Bellhop pretty accurately. That suggests that he was paying attention. There is also no reason to believe that he wasn’t paying attention to the trick you did or that he didn’t remember it.

It seems that your objection is that he compared one trick to the other. Both tricks are demonstrations of amazing card control. Both tricks involve producing the cards you want right after shuffling. You see the many differences between the two. He focused on the similarities. That’s a difference in interpretation, not a problem of remembering or paying attention.

He thought it was the same trick.

Thanks duanebarry for that wonderful quote. I'll have to read that several more times. Very cool.

Mike

One guy says "I saw that same thing on tv once. Except he used the whole deck, and there was something about a guy at a club, and 4 queens..." [emphasis added]

Thank Derren Brown before me. He brought the Brook quote to magicians' attention in Pure Effect.

I think both Brook and Angelou are worth keeping in mind.

It turns out that Michael Ammar also touches on this topic of audience memory in his new $1 online lecture, starting at 51:30.

Josh Jay: "You have somehow resisted the urge to find the card, split it into four of a kind, find all the spades, produce a dove..."

Ammar: "Oh, I did. I did for years. [...] And I would just keep going -- "and here's another trick!" And I learned that it all blurs together in their head when you do more than 2 or 3 card tricks, and they can't remember what you did. I really would like people to be able to say, "He did this, and this, and this," and describe the effect, and that makes it need to be a simple plot, and not cluttered by a bunch of other stuff. That was one of the hardest things for me to learn: to not step on my own magical memories."

Pepka, I don't believe people think you did the same trick. Try doing the exact same trick again and again. Not like ambitious cad, where you repeat the effect, but like Triumph. See what happens.

Dani Daortiz once told a story about how Tamariz helped him to make his act better. Tamariz told Dani "You have a problem, you start VERY strong, and you end VERY strong."

Dani later realized the important things on that sentence. Of course mystery is important! But, as Tamariz wisely says and does on his magic acts, the emotion spectators feel is of great importance.

Dani DaOrtiz is capable of doing a 1:30 hours long magic act. And it's pure geniality. I'm not saying this because I love his job (which I do), but because he knows how to make memorable moments of magic. And for that, emotion is very important. He discovered that the spawn of attention of people, on the average is of 15 to 20 minutes. Thinking of that he divided his act in chunks of 15 minutes or less. Each "chunk" would have similar effects. Not similar in plot, but similar timing and emotion. For instance, he would begin with quick powerful magical effects, where he does most of the work, and interacts with spectators in a funny and fast paced rhythm. And would do 15 min or less of this kind of magic. Then, he changed the pacing, timing and emotion. For instance, he would start with his mathematical trick (very good, by the way), where "nothing" happens for at least 7 to 10 minutes, and spectators do everything themselves. A big contrast. People are not aware of this changes, but they can feel it. And interest goes high again.

In my opinion, the spectators describing the thing you did as another thing is something you should strive for. I think its better when you can control it. For instance: when people remember they shuffled the deck, when they actually haven't touched it. That is something I want in some of the effects I do. And it depends in some important things: 1) the design of your tricks; 2) your presentation; and 3)your persona and the non-verbal messages you send to your spectators.

I don't know if this is the explanation you are looking for, and I'm not sure I really understood your problem (my fault, not yours) but there are 4 great books on those subjects: "Strong Magic", and "Designing Miracles" form Darwin Ortiz, and "The Magic Way" and "Five Points in Magic" from Juan Tamariz.

I am finding that the easiest I(for me and the audience gets the best results.....i.e....gemini twins....b'wave (all of them) sponge bunnies...coins across all get great responses for me..

Two things at play here.

One has an inability to be able to recreate what has been seen. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Conflicting testimony from those standing next to each other is common.

Also when you do a great job you touch their feelings. Describing feelings is even harder. They want to to remember it how they do. They are putting in that feeling without knowing it so they embellish. They include all the misdirection you made them see! This is all good.

Are they paying attention? Absolutely.