SoMA Spring Newsletter 2023
Happy Easter from SoMA!
Hope this finds everyone well! This is a great time of year for magic, miracles, and hoaxes. Many folks around the world will be participating in celebrations featuring exciting mashups of pagan fertility rituals and commemorations of alleged resurrections. Plus, April Fools Day is just around the corner. Historically speaking, one of my personal favorite resurrections involves Benjamin Rucker (1889- 1934), who performed as a magician under the name 'Black Herman.' He traveled throughout the US selling patent medicines and lucky charms, but a staple of his reputation was his repeated apparent deaths and resurrections. When he came to town, he would rent out a small plot of land, slow his pulse to an apparent stop, have himself be declared dead by a doctor, and then ostensibly be buried in a grave for a few days. At an allotted time he would arise 'from the dead' and commence his magic show. Quality showmanship. Things got weird when he genuinely died in 1934. Many people were naturally skeptical of his reported death. And, as a result, his real death was transformed into a spectacle: His assistant, Washington Reeves, charged admission to view his former boss' corpse. One potentially delightful detail (that I've not yet been able to verify from a primary source) is that paying spectators were furnished with pins, so that they could poke his corpse themselves to confirm it's authenticity. When questioned about the tastefulness of the spectacle, Reeve's allegedly responded: "It's what he would have wanted." Reeve's (and other copycats) went on to take up the stage name "Black Herman" for themselves, arguably resulting in a sort of immortality. Also, we're still talking about him.
Anyway, our latest big announcement is that SoMA has partnered with the British Society of Aesthetics to hold a workshop on the 'Art and Aesthetics of Illusion' that will be taking place in London this summer on the 11 of July 2023. This will be a free in-person event, and I'm looking forward to sharing some more details on the currently secret venue soon. But for now, I can say the event will be taking place in central London.
In the meantime, here's a recap of some recent SoM-related news.
Stay safe & sane,
Matt Tompkins
On Behalf of the SoMA Committee
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Upcoming Event/Call for Abstracts:
BSA/SoMA Workshop
The Art & Aesthetics of Illusion
We are delighted to announce an upcoming BSA workshop on the Art and the Aesthetics of Illusions funded by The British Society of Aesthetics (BSA) and co-sponsored by the Science of Magic Association (SoMA). The workshop will be led by SoMA’s Jason Leddington (Philosophy, Bucknell). It will be taking place on Tuesday 11 July 2023 in central London (currently secret venue TBA).
We are also soliciting abstracts for presentation proposals (DEADLINE: May 1). And I would like to emphasize that this a VERY open call: We welcome both academic talks from across any discipline, as well as performance pieces. If you have an idea for a presentation related to art and illusion please do get in touch!
More details on the event and how to submit a proposal can be found HERE
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Virtual Event Recording:
Magic and Misinformation Panel Discussion
In the last newsletter, I advertised an event organized by The Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School who held a virtual panel discussion on magic, medicine, misinformation, and ethics. The panel containted some familiar SoMA faces, including Jay Olson and Jeanette Andrews. The event was recorded and is now freely available to watch.
You can watch the event HERE
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New Podcast:
Richard Wiseman's
'On Your Mind'
on Magic
Magician, psychologist, author, and SoMA keynote speaker Richard Wiseman has recently launched a new podcast venture, where he presents on various psychology topics alongside science journalist Marnie Chesterton. This week's episode focused on the topic of magic.
You can listen to the podcast HERE |
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New Paper: Magic and 'Reverse Psychology'
Alice Pailhès and Gustav Kuhn have recently published a new scientific study investigating participants reactions to performances of variations of Vernon's 'Five Card Mental Force.'
You can read the full paper HERE
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New Paper: The Transparent Psi Project
Some of you may be familiar with Daryl Bem's (2011) rather notorious 'Feeling the Future' paper, which appeared to demonstrate empirical evidence of precognition in humans (particularly with regards to porn). The paper created a sensation and was arguably one of the harbinger's of experimental psychology's recent reckoning with with transparency and replicability in regards to statistical analyses and research methodology. A large team of international researchers, led by Zoltan Kekecs, of Lund University, recently published the results of their attempts to replicate the effects described in Bem's Experiment 1. This replication study is highly impressive endeavor that in the words of SoMA keynote speaker, Chris French, sets "a new standard for rigour and transparency, incorporating many measures to rule out any bias or questionable research practices."
You can read Chris French's commentary HERE
And you can read the full article HERE
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