>>Marco Tempest: I mix technology and new media, and what I'd like to show you today
is a demonstration of augmented reality.
And what you're about to see is not prerecorded.
It's live and generated by this contraption here in real time.
So please keep your eyes on the big screen and let's get started.
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.
Now, magic is deception.
But it is a deception we enjoy.
To enjoy being deceived, an audience must first suspend its belief.
It was the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge who first suggested this receptive state of mind.
>>> 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.
>>Marco Tempest: Now 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.
Now, we're 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.
Jean Robert-Houdin, France's greatest illusionist who first recognized the role of the magician
as a story teller.
He said something that I have posted on the wall of my studio.
>>> A conjurer is not a juggler.
He is an actor playing the part of a magician.
>>Marco Tempest: Which means magic is a 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 says that magicians deliberately exploit the way our audience think.
>>> 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
>>Marco Tempest: 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.
Now, one of the key qualities of all stories is that they are made to be shared.
We feel compelled to tell them.
When I do a trick at a party, 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 their 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 Google+.
The tools are 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 fantasy.
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 ] >>Marco Tempest: Thank you.
>>David Rowan: So Marco, this is brilliant and entertaining but I'm thinking there are
some senior Google executives here.
Is there any real world application of magic for a technology company.
>>Marco Tempest: Magic is a really good sandbox to prototype future technologies and make
us see how our future technology might feel like.
So imagine a system like this for communication, for presentations, for distance education.
And in a way, you could say that the whole world of interactive computing is kind of
an engineered illusion, so why not make a marriage between the technology and the magician
and create seemingly impossible things.
>>David Rowan: You need magicians to design your user interface.
Thank you very much, Marco.
>>Marco Tempest: Thank you.
Thank you.