UCLIC Seminar: What stage magic reveals about our interactions with technology

Speaker: Wally Smith, University of Melbourne
UCL Contact: Sandy Gould (Visitors from outside UCL please email in advance).
Date/Time: 05 May 15, 15:00 - 16:00
Venue: Physics A1/3

Abstract

In this talk I argue that we can draw insights from stage magic about people's interactions with technology. A general perspective is established by using Lucy Suchman's recent notion of 'human-machine reconfigurations' to compare conjuring performances with displays of computerised life forms. Analysis of recent projects in social robotics, for example, suggests that technologists often rely on techniques of 'dissimulation' that mirror the craft of the magician. Having set this broad perspective, the talk will then consider the detailed nature of the deception enacted in conjuring. I argue that we need to go beyond recent accounts of stage illusions by cognitive scientists that emphasize their basis in perceptual and attentional errors. Instead, a detailed analysis of conjuring tricks reveals a form of 'narrative failure' in which spectators are led to follow a particular (erroneous) story of events. The approach is illustrated through an analysis of a selected trick, Martin Gardner's 'Turnaround'. In considering the implications for people's interactions with technology, it will be shown how that this pattern of narrative failure depends on properties of artefacts, in particular symmetry and stable occlusion. I will conclude by discussing the possible implications of this form of narrative failure for the radical misconceptions that sometimes lie at the heart of industrial accidents.

Wally Smith

Wally Smith is a Senior Lecturer in the Interaction Design Lab, Department of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. His other current research projects are on the use of social media for smoking cessation, the design of mobile apps for student fieldwork, and the design of digital tools for citizen-produced history and heritage.