TED Talks-Marco Tempest:A Magical Tale (with augmented reality) & more

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Transcript:



What I'd like to show you today is something in the way of an experiment. Today's its debut. It's a demonstration of augmented reality. And the visuals you're about to see are not prerecorded. They are live and reacting to me in real time. I like to think of it as a kind of technological magic. So fingers crossed. And keep your eyes on the big screen.

Augmented reality is the melding of the real world with computer-generated imagery. It seems the perfect medium to investigate magic and ask, why, in a technological age, we continue to have this magical sense of wonder. Magic is deception, but it is a deception we enjoy. To enjoy being deceived, an audience must first suspend its disbelief. It was the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge who first suggested this receptive state of mind.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: I try to convey a semblance of truth in my writing to produce for these shadows of the imagination a willing suspension of disbelief that, for a moment, constitutes poetic faith.

MT: This faith in the fictional is essential for any kind of theatrical experience. Without it, a script is just words. Augmented reality is just the latest technology. And sleight of hand is just an artful demonstration of dexterity. We are all very good at suspending our disbelief. We do it every day, while reading novels, watching television or going to the movies. We willingly enter fictional worlds where we cheer our heroes and cry for friends we never had. Without this ability there is no magic.

It was Jean Robert-Houdin, France's greatest illusionist, who first recognized the role of the magician as a storyteller. He said something that I've posted on the wall of my studio.

Jean Robert-Houdin: A conjurer is not a juggler. He is an actor playing the part of a magician.

MT: Which means magic is theater and every trick is a story. The tricks of magic follow the archetypes of narrative fiction. There are tales of creation and loss, death and resurrection, and obstacles that must be overcome. Now many of them are intensely dramatic. Magicians play with fire and steel, defy the fury of the buzzsaw, dare to catch a bullet or attempt a deadly escape. But audiences don't come to see the magician die, they come to see him live. Because the best stories always have a happy ending.

The tricks of magic have one special element. They are stories with a twist. Now Edward de Bono argued that our brains are pattern matching machines. He said that magicians deliberately exploit the way their audiences think.

Edward de Bono: Stage magic relies almost wholly on the momentum error. The audience is led to make assumptions or elaborations that are perfectly reasonable, but do not, in fact, match what is being done in front of them.

MT: In that respect, magic tricks are like jokes. Jokes lead us down a path to an expected destination. But when the scenario we have imagined suddenly flips into something entirely unexpected, we laugh. The same thing happens when people watch magic tricks. The finale defies logic, gives new insight into the problem, and audiences express their amazement with laughter. It's fun to be fooled.

One of the key qualities of all stories is that they're made to be shared. We feel compelled to tell them. When I do a trick at a party -- (Laughter) that person will immediately pull their friend over and ask me to do it again. They want to share the experience. That makes my job more difficult, because, if I want to surprise them, I need to tell a story that starts the same, but ends differently -- a trick with a twist on a twist. It keeps me busy.

Now experts believe that stories go beyond our capacity for keeping us entertained. We think in narrative structures. We connect events and emotions and instinctively transform them into a sequence that can be easily understood. It's a uniquely human achievement. We all want to share our stories, whether it is the trick we saw at the party, the bad day at the office or the beautiful sunset we saw on vacation.

Today, thanks to technology, we can share those stories as never before, by email, Facebook, blogs, tweets, on TED.com. The tools of social networking, these are the digital campfires around which the audience gathers to hear our story. We turn facts into similes and metaphors, and even fantasies. We polish the rough edges of our lives so that they feel whole. Our stories make us the people we are and, sometimes, the people we want to be. They give us our identity and a sense of community. And if the story is a good one, it might even make us smile.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)


Marco Tempest: The Magic of Truth and Lies (and iPods)

























Transcript:



So the type of magic I like, and I'm a magician, is a magic that uses technology to create illusions. So I would like to show you something I've been working on. It's an application that I think will be useful for artists -- multimedia artists in particular. It synchronizes videos across multiple screens of mobile devices. And I borrowed these three iPods from people here in the audience to show you what I mean. And I'm going to use them to tell you a little bit about my favorite subject: deception.

(Music)

One of my favorite magicians is Karl Germain. He had this wonderful trick where a rosebush would bloom right in front of your eyes. But it was his production of a butterfly that was the most beautiful.

(Recording) Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, the creation of life.

(Applause)

(Music)

Marco Tempest: When asked about deception, he said this:

Announcer: Magic is the only honest profession. A magician promises to deceive you -- and he does.

MT: I like to think of myself as an honest magician. I use a lot of tricks, which means that sometimes I have to lie to you. Now I feel bad about that. But people lie every day.

(Ringing) Hold on.

Girl in Phone: Hey, where are you?

MT: Stuck in traffic. I'll be there soon. You've all done it.

(Laughter)

Lady: I'll be ready in just a minute, darling.

Man: It's just what I've always wanted.

Woman: You were great.

MT: Deception, it's a fundamental part of life. Now polls show that men tell twice as many lies as women -- assuming the women they ask told the truth.

(Laughing)

We deceive to gain advantage and to hide our weaknesses. The Chinese general Sun Tzu said that all war was based on deception. Oscar Wilde said the same thing of romance.

Some people deceive for money. Let's play a game. Three cards, three chances.

Announcer: One five will get you 10, 10 will get you 20. Now where's the lady? Where is the queen?

MT: This one? Sorry. You lose. Well, I didn't deceive you. You deceived yourself. Self-deception. That's when we convince ourselves that a lie is the truth. Sometimes it's hard to tell the two apart. Compulsive gamblers are experts at self-deception. (Slot machine noise) They believe they can win. They forget the times they lose.

The brain is very good at forgetting. Bad experiences are quickly forgotten. Bad experiences quickly disappear. Which is why in this vast and lonely cosmos, we are so wonderfully optimistic. Our self-deception becomes a positive illusion -- why movies are able to take us onto extraordinary adventures; why we believe Romeo when he says he loves Juliet; and why single notes of music, when played together, become a sonata and conjure up meaning.

That's "Clair de Lune." Its composer called Debussy said that art was the greatest deception of all. Art is a deception that creates real emotions -- a lie that creates a truth. And when you give yourself over to that deception, it becomes magic.

(Applause)

Thank you. Thank you very much.

(Applause)




Marco Temprest:Augmented reality, techno magic






















Transcript:





So magic is a very introverted field. While scientists regularly publish their latest research, we magicians do not like to share our methods and secrets. That's true even amongst peers. But if you look at creative practice as a form of research, or art as a form of R&D for humanity, then how could a cyber illusionist like myself share his research?

Now my own speciality is combining digital technology and magic. And about three years ago, I started an exercise in openness and inclusiveness by reaching out into the open-source software community to create new digital tools for magic -- tools that could eventually be shared with other artists to start them off further on in the process and to get them to the poetry faster.

Today, I'd like to show you something which came out of these collaborations. It's an augmented reality projection tracking and mapping system, or a digital storytelling tool. Could we bring down the lights please? Thank you. So let's give this a try. And I'm going to use it to give you my take on the stuff of life.

(Applause)

(Music)

Terribly sorry. I forgot the floor.

Wake up.

Hey.

Come on.

(Music)

Please.

(Music)

Come on.

Ah, sorry about that. Forgot this.

(Music)

Give it another try.

Okay.

He figured out the system.

(Music)

(Laughter)

(Applause)

(Music)

Uh oh.

(Music)

All right. Let's try this. Come on.

(Music)

(Laughter)

(Music)

Hey.

(Music)

You heard her, go ahead.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Bye-bye.

(Applause)