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 This is an open letter to all magicians,

Almost all magicians should avoid using AI for your promotional materials.

Did you skoff at this edict? Good. That means you are paying attention so let me tell you why...

A long time ago, much longer now than it seems, business cards and websites were expensive for various reasons. To get a proper business card made and designed was pricey as was to have a proper website designed. It took time, money, and skill to have those promotional materials made for you and the people who had the funds to get the stuff made were working professionals.(or semi-pros with real jobs)

Enter Vistaprint. Quick and cheap credentials at your fingertips. Any huckster could get business cards to legitimize their schemes. There were even kiosks in malls to get them knocked out fast. This let any two-bit amateur have a piece of paper that said "professional" on it for pennies compared to getting it done professionally. I am sure many people were scammed because of some Hollywood "producer" back then. 

 Then came Wordpress. This allowed industrious people with no skill to charge hand coded website prices for just slapping on a free template and undercut people who knew how to actually make a website by hand. Later on Wix did the same thing and made it even easier. Many magicians had a website with the "powered by Wix" tag at the bottom because they didn't want to pay for a proper website and went the "free" route.

What's my point you ponder? Eventually enough people were able to spot the difference between a professional product and a cheap imitation. Anyone with a flimsy templated business card or website had people second guessing their legitimacy. If the promotional material was cheap how good could the performer be? Were they faking it til' they were making it? In most cases... yes. Yes they were. Today it is less of an issue because the tools got better and more commonplace as well as the costs came down. Those examples were, thankfully, in a very niche place. They served one purpose. 

This is where AI comes in. It is FAR more pervasive because it fills many holes (giggity). It ranges from searching, to writing, to art, to coding, and beyond. The one thing AI and the previously mentioned examples have in common is they allow(ed) mediocre people to make mediocre things. People with no training or credentials could suddenly be "legitimate". This kind of evolution can be dangerous as it's already hard enough to cut through the cacophony of modern monetization.

 

 The reason I suggest that the modern magi think twice about using AI is thus:

1. People are already starting to be able to spot the use of AI because with no actual understanding of it, what is produced has a "look". The AI art style is very apparent and people will start to dismiss your promotional materials because of it. As I am oft to say, once one thing is suspect, everything is suspect. If you think that cartoon of you saved you a few bucks from hiring an actual artist, you have no idea how much in bookings you are losing because you come off as cheap and look like every other amateur using it.

2. Many magicians already have enough problems connecting with their audience due to lack of training and perhaps some social cue inhibiting genetics. What you DON'T need is something else thinking for you that ALSO doesn't connect with people. It's like the AI leading the blind. If you have no understanding of your tools, don't expect it to produce something that will make up for your experience deficit. It's like staring at your circular saw on the bench and wondering why it's not making you a table already. 

 The term "AI Slop" exists for a reason, and when you start using it to promote your show, business, etc you will get lumped in with that slop. Do it the right way and hire a professional. Obviously that is harder and harder due to the things I have mentioned above, but that is where recommendations and asking friends comes in. Do it right or reap the rewards of doing it the lazy cheap way. Up to you. 

Do the work and think for yourself...

Distinction matters...

 Over on FB, Luna Shimada made a post giving the history of her father's Parasol act and how it differs from the modern umbrella act. I asked her if I could share it here and she graciously said yes. So if you are into some history, kick right back and you'll hear a tale... 

_________________________________________________________________________

 

In 1968 my family and I were traveling all over the world and we ended up in Mexico City. It was my mother’s idea to create a magic act that drew on my father’s Japanese culture. So they went back to Japan and purchased a number of traditional Japanese paper parasols and materials.

Japanese parasols are different from the umbrellas many magicians use today. They are made of paper and bamboo, sometimes silk. This distinction is important.

 

My parents began creating what became their very original parasol manipulation act. Up to that point nobody in the world had really seen anything quite like it.

 

My father had been performing a dove act when he met my mother, and at that time many acts followed what magicians call the diminish and return concept. A particular object, whether it was a bird, a bottle, or something else, would be the recurring theme throughout the act, multiplying, vanishing, and reappearing in different ways. That structure was very common in magic of that era.

 

My mother thought, you produce all these doves, why not parasols. They are larger, more visual, connected to your culture, and artistically beautiful. It was a natural evolution of the diminish and return idea, but expressed through Japanese imagery and aesthetics.

That was the beginning of something entirely new.

 

 

The act quickly took them across international stages and gained attention and recognition. When they returned to Japan and performed it on national television, a young magician approached them. He had been inspired by their parasol act and asked if it would be acceptable for him to develop a version of the idea in Western style, performing in tails and producing Western rain umbrellas rather than Japanese parasols.

 

At the time my parents thought it was an interesting concept, though artistically quite different. Producing rain umbrellas did not carry the same cultural aesthetic as traditional parasols. But they were artists, not territorial people, and they did not see it as competition. So they gave their blessing.

 

That young magician was Fukai.

 

Fukai went on to develop what became the well known umbrella manipulation act using specially designed umbrellas that are much smaller than traditional parasols. Because these umbrellas were engineered specifically for magicians and later manufactured and distributed within the magic community, the umbrella act became extremely popular and widely performed.

 

The important historical point is this. The Shimada Japanese parasol act came first. Fukai’s umbrella act was inspired by that original concept but adapted into a Western performance style with different props, music, and staging. It is not THE parasol act. It is a parasol act adjacent utilizing different materials. 

Japanese parasols and Fukai umbrellas are actually very different instruments. Parasols are larger, more rigid, and do not collapse nearly as small as the umbrellas designed for manipulation. Working with them requires a different handling and stage presence.

 

And just to be clear, there has never been any conflict between our families. I have great respect for Fukai and Kimika. They are wonderful people and my parents were fond of them as well. Our paths simply developed in different directions.

 

Fukai chose to manufacture and share his umbrellas widely with the magic community.

The Shimada family took a different path. Our handling and techniques were passed down through personal mentorship, teacher to student, in order to preserve the integrity, history, and lineage of the act.

 

Many years later, I went on to create my own parasol act that was drawing on the traditions of my father's act, but I modernized it, re-conceptualize the presentation, and even created my own techniques which needed to evolve due to different costuming and different criterias. This version of the parasol act became solely my own creation and skill set. I took my father's work and adapted it to my own style..

 

 

Still using the traditional Japanese parasols, though not umbrellas.

Today many magicians refer to umbrella manipulation as the parasol act, but technically speaking they are not the same thing at all. To most performers it may seem like a small semantic difference.

 

But to artists and to magic history the distinction matters.

 

____________________________________________________________________________

 

As a side note, I always liked Luna's Parasol act as it had a subtle story of a universe being created and I thought that was cool. She also has shared some of how the act worked over the years and there is some clever stuff in it. 

 

The only person you are fooling...

 Dear magicians,

When you make posts like these....

It makes you look mentally challenged.

I understand rage baiting is all the... rage.. nowadays and a seemingly surefire way to get people to engage with your, I'll be nice and call it "content", but it looks like you don't know how your own craft works.

If I was a client looking for someone to hire for whatever magical reason, I sure wouldn't go with the person who seems to not know how their own tricks works. Now if you were posting someone else's work saying the same things, that's a different matter but... IT'S CLEARLY YOU IN THE VIDEOS! 

Please stop doing this, you're better than that...

Or maybe not?

                                                                                                                                        Sincerely,

                                                                                                                                                    Everyone
 

 

Bizzaro.'s guide to making your own download links

 One of the things I am pretty proficient at is finding ways to make various things, both physical and technological, do stuff it wasn't intended for. 

"Just like Michelangelo saw the angel in the stone, I look at a guy like Kevin Costner and see a giant peach grub who can fart the Blue Danube!" - Elijah C. Skuggs 

 Much like Karl Marx, I tend to believe the means of production should be in the hands of the people, at least when it comes to selling your own magic products. Obviously not everyone has that desire or ability but for those that do, here is a hot tip for all of you. 

 In an attempt to move into the modern age I decided to make a lot of my DVDs into downloadable videos. To do this I looked into various shopping cart software that wouldn't ding me left and right and that is when I found the company Vibralogix. They have a few code based programs and one of them is called "Vibracart Pro". 

One of the many things you can do with this program is send a download to someone in case something messes up or you just need to send a gift to someone. I realized that it generates a unique download code every time you do this. I realized I could use this to make download slips for my physical products that I sell in my lecture. It also lets me control how many times the download can be accessed and how long until it self destructs. When combined with something like a Tinyurl shortener, I can print out slips and even have QR codes. I made a video below to show you just how easy it is!

 Why is this important you ask? It adds another layer to prevent theft. Obviously once one person has it, they can send/give it to their friends and there isn't much you can do about that. However, this prevents them from just sharing the download link as if it was a password protected YT or Vimeo link. This adds an extra step which might deter some since it has a download limit. 

It will take some set-up but the manual is very robust and yes, they do have a Wordpress plugin to interface with the backend if you prefer that. The nice thing is you never have to implement the shopping cart anywhere if you just need the codes. (I've even used this shopping cart as a personal materials calculator for our escape room company on a private page)

There are places like Amazon that can also kind of do this, but you have to give them money and for a bit more effort, you get to retain control over everything.

If that's your kind of kink, then you might just like this set-up. 

Independent thought....

Vegas is a small community and we all mostly know each other. If someone needs to know something we can get hold of each other pretty easy. Obviously in the rest of the world not stuck in the middle of a desert, it's different. One thing we talk a lot about when we gather is on the subject of creating and crediting. Obviously independent thought happens all the time. Collective conscious and all that jazz. 

However, I just would like to say to everyone who thinks that creating something in a vacuum without seeing someone else's idea gives you the right to publish or sell it... 

IT F$%#ING DOESN'T!!

I don't care if a biblically accurate angel came to you on a DMT bender one night and graced your mind with this golden idea, if you didn't create it first, IT'S NOT YOURS!

"What about things like UBER and Lyft?" That's a service, not an art.

"Well Coke and RC cola..." That's a product, not an art.

"What about..." I DON'T WANT TO HEAR YOUR BULLSHIT WHATABOUT-ISMS THAT YOU TELL YOURSELF THAT CONVINCE YOU IT'S OK!

If you don't get permission from the originator, you are stealing. Plain and simple. All you have to do is reach out and ask for their blessing. Usually they will just ask for credit. Sometimes they will say no and if they say NO, stay... the fugg... away from it. Sometimes you can partner up with them to improve and collaborate on it. Hey great! 

To all of you armchair dickbags on internet forums, the moment I hear any of you say "Well no one owns ideas and blah blah blah" all I ever think is "Spoken like someone who has never created anything good in their life". Take your cover band ass to the back of the line. 

If someone says to you, "Oh that's like so-and so's thing..." and you don't reach out to the originator, then you KNOW you are in the wrong and just don't wanna be told so. That's your inner Jimminy Cricket telling you you're a POS you're ignoring. Just listen to it and...

 

Sage advice...

 This might be my new favorite YT channel. 

Come at me bruh...

Having something be a "hit" in today's world is a double edged sword. You get a bump of clout, but you also get a slew of idiots coming up behind you to steal and expose your creations on the internet.

Knock-offs have been running rampant through our industry for some time obviously but it always baffles me when I see anyone defending it. I'll see other magicians in the comments taking the side of the thieves and ex-posers. This even happens in private magic forums! Some tourists defend shitty behavior and I am here to say something to ANY of you I see doing that, no matter where it is...

D-E-D

 

When I see someone defending the theft of another's creation without their consent or permission all I think to myself is, "Spoken like someone who has never created a thing in their life". I am sure our paths will never cross but you better HOPE I don't recognize you if we ever do. You are not a magician, you are a slug doing card tricks and the way you interact with others online tells me plenty about you and your mindset and I'm pretty sure we won't get along.

So take your idiotic "hot takes" and edgy comments and let them wash over you in your mediocrity. You will never be viewed as a professional until you wise up (and that might be fine with you) but don't go around bitching about people who want to take the art seriously when they chide and ignore your dumb ass after you make asinine comments about how theft and exposure is ok.

It's time for you to sit on a tack...