The magic of processes

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false cards or the pre-placing of copies of cards around a room.

* The trick itself is far more complex than it first appears. There are subtleties and nuances of the activities carried out by the magician—false cuts, double lifts, palmed cards and the like. The deception is not just limited to the cards themselves, but may also include sneaking looks at various cards, distracting the attention of the audience by waving the hands or orally catching people’s attention. All of these activities are designed to look like natural actions to a casual observer.

* The information conveyed by the magician is not the true reality of what has actually happened. Deliberate distractions and misdirection techniques can be employed to send the wrong information to the audience.

The effective manipulation of processes is very much like the manipulation of playing cards, albeit without the deliberate intention to mislead. to capture a process is very often not as simple as just watching somebody perform a task and then copying the perceived actions. Without a good knowledge of what is actually going on, this task can be very difficult. If the process is not captured effectively and accurately, then it will be impossible to reproduce the results of the process. There are a number of ways to ensure that the process is captured correctly:

* The trick must be looked at from several points of view, rather than purely from the point of view of a casual observer. In fact, with a rigorous and structured approach to observing what is going on from a number of different perspectives, almost any trick can be worked out to some degree.

* The end result must be related back to the initial conditions of the trick and full traceability established. How is it possible to go from one set of conditions to another—if it does not seem possible then there is some key information missing.

* The role of all the participants must be examined, including the audience members and the magician. But it is not good enough to stop there, as there may be several other roles that exist that are not obvious—what about the possibility of the magician having an accomplice either in the audience or on the other end of a phone line or radio line? These are techniques that are regularly employed by magicians.