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In October of 2017 I went to the Shanghai International Magic Convention just to watch and discuss magic with other magicians. I saw so many great performances, there was the reknowned mentalist Banachek, the writer of the Psychological Subtleties book series and many others about mentalism. One illusion of his that really stood out was him wrapping his head with cloth tape and aluminium foil as the most certainly opaque blindfold imaginable. He a then had audience members bring out random objects from their pockets and he was able to very accurately describe them. He also did a terrifying russian roulette routine where he made a prediction before randomly giving spectators envelops, some with knives in them and some without. His correctly guessed beforhand who would have the blades and who wouldn't. Perhaps the most inexplicable act was from a Dutch performer called Niek Takens, who won the stage gala competition. His card productions were incredibly clean, his fingers were wide open and his sleeves rolled up. I actually don't have a clue how he did it. Another act that really caught my attention, partly because it was really clean, but also very unusual, was this Egyptian themed act from Italy. He openly produced these huge lamps and paper fans from his bare hands with no cover. There was also a surprisingly underwhelming floating piano performance where the secret what somewhat too obvious. The whole convention was full of creativity ad originality, I saw act involving magic with flowers, paper planes, dice, paint brushes and leaves. An extremely spectacular show was this act done in front of a translucent sheet onto which computer generated images were projected. This was intended to augment some sleight of hand dove magic tricks. I wasn't sure if it was meant to be magical or just visually extravagant.
You may may struggle to grasp how messy I am without experiencing my filth first hand. My show will leave your floor covered in loose salt, milk and water drips, cookie crumbs and wrappers and chewed up or torn pieces of playing cards or paper, also popped balloons. My act is heavily inspired by, but nowhere near as good as, the Great Rocco, who famously scatters the stage with his magical detritus. He makes heaps of food appear like pretzels, grapes, wine, peanuts and chocolate and just tosses them on the floor. My favourite trick of his is his milk to ice cream illusion when he hides an icecream up his sleeve, not coated or covered in anything to protect the lining of his jacket. He is a true artist and although that sounds like a joke, I don't mean it to be. His act is actually one of the most entertaining performances I've seen. I saw a lecture of his once, he had these huge piles of props on tables. These objects were not organised in any way, just loosely tossed in a heap. He opened by saying "I know this looks like a huge pile of junk, but these are actually piles of miracles". His talk seemed to have no structure, he just rifled through these mounds randomly pulling things out and doing tricks with them. It was awesome. You can do magic with anything, I don't understand why magicians restrict themselves so much to just using coins and playing cards.
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