"Identifying the Boundaries of Magic"

Back during pandemic times, I was awarded a sabbatical from Carthage College. Part of my sabbatical project involved gaining some training in qualitative research methods. This week, I published my very first paper using those methods. The paper, entitled "Identifying the Boundaries of Magic: A Qualitative Study of Expert Magicians" was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Performance Magic. My collaborators, Sarah Tuchel, Gustav Kuhn, Dan Simons, and I set out to understand expert magicians' attitudes about where magic ends and other performance arts begin. Interviewees included: Joe Diamond, Jamy Ian Swiss, Carisa Hendrix, Jeanette Andrews, Tom Stone, and David Parr. Video from the interviews is available on Science of Magic Association website at: https://scienceofmagicassoc.org/blog/2024/7/1/interview-series-on-magic-misdirection

Sarah Tuchel and I presented this work at the 2023 British Society of Aesthetics workshop on the "Art & Aesthetics of Illusion." You can view a video version of that presentation here.