I just wanna share about my final paper and share some random ideas. My topic will be the same as my capstone project, named as Deceptive Interaction Design: A Strategy for Magical Entertaining Experience. So basically it is about how to utilize/embed digital technology to magic tricks to create engaging and entertaining experience to the user which is the topic that I really passionate about for a long time. Also this topic, including deception and ambiguity in the design, is challenging for me as a User Experience designer, and also has challenged traditional views of HCI. That’s why I interested in this topic.
Let’s me explain a little bit more. The magic performance is categorized into different types such as stage illusions or stage magic, micromagic or close-up magic, mathemagic thats combine magic and mathematics, etc. (source) but there is no type of magic that combine magic and digital technology together. I’ll call this new type of magic as technological magic or “technomagic”. The area of technomagic is very unfamiliar to both magicians and audiences, yet very interesting and worth to explore when we consider about unlimited potential of digital technology. Technomagic in my view can be roughly categorized as a technological stage magic and technological close-up magic. Technological stage magic are performed for large audiences in auditorium, using large scale props or advanced technologies. Here is an example of technological stage magic performed by Marco Tempest at TED.
http://www.ted.com/talks/marco_tempest_a_magical_tale_with_augmented_reality.html
My focus is about technological close-up magic which is performed to the audience close to magician, using everyday digital devices such as mobile phone, tablet, or laptop as magic props. Based on my research that close-up magic is more intimate, I hope I can create a new engaging experience for audience. So if you have any suggestions and thoughts, please let me know. Also I’m finding participants for interview in this topic. I need anyone who have seen magic performance (either from TV, show, friends, street, anywhere), and can still remember and talk about it. If you’re available, please let me know too. Thanks!
P.S. I forgot to talk about other potential ideas I have, I’m also interested in User Experience in amusement park and topic about food and music (as restaurant environment). Anyone can use these topics if you interested.
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February 16, 2013 at 10:23 am
Tsaiyi
Hello Wishaya,
Thank you for the post. I really like the clip, that is fantastic.
Allow me to hark out a few theoretical resources that might be useful for you here. I am not sure where are you going to and how you will conceptualize the magical technology, so that I pull out quite a few different directions:
1. theories about surrealist art, especially how it is an kind of art about giving our everyday reality twists and turns. Many surrealists take as their topics everyday objects, but they compose the everyday topics in very unexpected way. Also how the surrealist art are made analogues to dreams, because dreams associate everyday objects in an illogical way, in the same way surrealist art or the magical technology does. Also how the surrealist method are believed to have capacity to reveal our unconscious desires and anxieties. See, for example, Henri Lefebvre, “Brief Notes on Some Well-Trodden Ground,” “The Knowledge of Everyday Life” from his book The Critique of Everyday Life, Vo l.
2. Benjamin’s notion of Phantasmagoria. I don’t know it well enough to give you a brief summary here.
3. Baudrillard’s notion of simulacrum. See his article of “The Precession of Simulacra.” Baudrillard observes the development of media and technology and argues a drastic epistemological change of our age. That is, right now the image we see in our daily life are no more a truthful representation of reality. Instead, images take on their own life and deceive us to believe they are reality. For example, all model pictures we see on the magazines have undergone some kind of modification, but we nevertheless believe that is how human beings should look like.And this the distinction between the image/virtual world and reality are no more clear. He terms the virtual world as “the hyperreal,” that is, more real than the real.
In my view, however, the moment of magic technology is exactly the moment when the truth and false can be distinguished. Because by watching the the techno-magic we are reminded what is the reality/physics principle that is being violated by the magic. The magic technology paradoxically restore the reality, at its most magical moment, at the age when no more pure and simple reality exist.
I hope these ideas help.
February 17, 2013 at 10:31 pm
Wishaya P.
Thanks for your comment and useful ideas. I’m pretty interested in surrealist theories, never thought about this before. Seems very interesting to look up. Thanks again!
February 19, 2013 at 11:19 am
Katie O'Donnell
I’ve seen magic shows before and they are quite fun. This paper from CHI2010 might be of interest to you. http://www.mrl.nott.ac.uk/~sdb/research/downloadable%20papers/marshall-chi-deception.pdf
February 20, 2013 at 12:25 am
Wishaya P.
Katie, actually my topic is based on that research too. It’s a very good research that I got a lot of insights. I have read through it few times and tried to read most of paper it refers to, hope I can find some more interesting insight. Also do you have time to talk with me about magic show you have seen? If you have any free time please tell me. I really appreciate if you can do short interview with me. Thank you!
February 20, 2013 at 1:11 pm
Katie O'Donnell
Sure, send me an email and we can set up a time!