Techno-illusionist and veteran speaker Marco Tempest returns to the TED stage with a new friend: EDI (pronounced “Eddie”) the robot. EDI, which stands for Electronic Deceptive Intelligence, is Tempest’s latest techno-aide, a friendly Baxter robot who ponders the difference between artificial and human intelligence. “Robot,” the newly awakened EDI interrupts, was coined in 1921 in […]
Magician Helder Guimarães starts his performance at TED2014 by telling the crowd Sturgeon’s law: “90% of everything is crap.” Still, he says, “Sturgeon may be correct, but he doesn’t have to be correct forever.” And that is a philosophy he brings to his very narrative magic — wowing the crowd with card tricks that tell […]
Today on stage at TED2014 magician and puzzler David Kwong blew minds when he pulled an audience member onstage, asked her to color in a few animals, and then revealed he was so sure he could predict her behavior that he had her choices written into the day’s New York Times crossword. Hm: What’s a […]
Magician and cruciverbalist David Kwong is one excited nerd. On stage at the end of an intense morning at TED2014 he pulls a random attendee on stage and asks her to color in five animals with different colors as he has his back turned. Kwong then predicts the right combination of colors and animals correctly, […]
David Blaine, the magician, illusionist and endurance artist, is back on prime time TV tonight with the special, David Blaine: Real or Magic. Traveling around the world, the TED speaker (watch his talk, “How I held my breath for 17 minutes“) performs magic and elicits astonished reactions from people on the street — as well as from […]
If you ever meet Apollo Robbins in person, hold onto your wallet. The professional sleight-of-hand artist, who has been studying magic for more than 25 years, made headlines in 2001 when he pickpocketed Jimmy Carter’s Secret Service detail, taking their badges and even the keys to the motorcade. Since then, he has gained a reputation […]
[ted id=310] Hypnosis is a source of both debate and fear. It’s an intimidating thought that the subconscious mind can listen and react to outside sources. But there are still many questions to be answered: Does the subconscious work independently of the conscious mind? Is it programmed by experiences or instructions? These are questions posed […]
Illusionist Marco Tempest (watch his cyber card trick and his electric take on Nikola Tesla) has a new assistant — Baxter the Robot. The star of this talk from roboticist Rodney Brooks, Baxter is a life-sized robot that has eyes that glance where he is about to move and arms that react to human touch, […]
Mathemagician Arthur Benjamin says that there are three reasons we learn math: calculation, application and inspiration. Yes, inspiration. Math is the science of patterns, and learning it teaches us not just logic but creative thinking, says Benjamin. So why, when math is beautiful and exciting, is so much of what we learn in school about preparing for […]
“Do you think it’s possible to control someone’s attention, or even their behavior? To me that would be the perfect superpower,” says Apollo Robbins at TEDGlobal 2013. “I’ve spent the last 20 years studying human behavior in an unconventional way: by picking pockets.” Robbins, whom The New Yorker called a “theatrical pickpocket” in their profile of […]
David Blaine is the master of the endurance stunt. In 1999, he was buried alive in a clear box underneath three tons of water. Over the course of seven days, about 75,000 people stopped by to watch him in his self-made tomb. In 2008, Blaine attempted to set the Guinness World Record for holding his […]
In this super cool talk from TEDxTokyo, magician Kohtaro Fujiyama morphs ripped pieces of paper into butterflies, and then lets them take flight, controlling their motion by waving fans. (Fast forward to 1:43 to watch.) This fascinating display is an adaptation of tezuma, a classic form of Edo magic that fuses illusion, story and music. […]
[ted id=1602 width=560 height=315] On the TED stage, illusionist Marco Tempest has explored the nature of truth and lies, brought a stick figure to life, charted the meaning of magic and told the sad tale of inventor Nikola Tesla. In his latest performance, given this summer at TEDGlobal, Tempest turns his eye to a magician’s […]
Marco Tempest wowed the TED crowd yesterday, and now he’s back with an experiment, a demonstration of live augmented reality using the Kinect. This one is “technological magic” and we are advised to keep our eyes on the big screen. Photos: Ryan Lash Magic is deception we enjoy, he says. The audience must suspend its […]