Music, Magic, and Illusion

Illusions are a part of our everyday experience: just think of how a pencil, when submerged in a glass of water, appears to be bent, not straight. Our senses create these types of illusions for us, and we tend not to think very much about them. But in magic shows, illusory experience moves from the background to the foreground as spectators witness sights that seem impossible. These sights are always accompanied by sounds and often by music, though spectators usually pay little attention to either. Magic shows present a fascinating laboratory for studying human perception through a variety of disciplinary lenses, including history, music, cognitive psychology, and media studies. Examining how music and sound design function in the magic shows of the past can help us understand illusions in modern media contexts, in which audio is an ever-present but understudied phenomenon. 

Inside the Classroom

This course will engage your creative and analytical skills through a variety of hands-on activities, including workshops and laboratory experiments. You’ll learn how to extract critical information from visually rich historical sources, like posters, programs, and illustrations, and use it to better understand the world of nineteenth-century theatrical spectacle—a world that included pantomime and melodrama, variety and vaudeville, opera and ballet, panorama and film. You’ll develop an embodied knowledge of the subject by learning and performing magic tricks to musical accompaniment. (Don’t worry: you’ll be coached by a professional!) In a laboratory setting, you’ll create and run experiments that seek to measure the effects of musical style and sound on different types of magic tricks. These multi-disciplinary encounters with music and magic will be extended to other modern illusory contexts, such as virtual reality, Foley sound, immersive museum exhibits, and mirror mazes. 

Outside the Classroom

The international locus for the modern magic show is Las Vegas, Nevada, where you can see several world-class acts (David Copperfield, Penn & Teller, Shin Lim) in the four-mile stretch known as the Strip. We will watch these practitioners at work, paying close attention to the ways they incorporate music and sound into their shows. We will also go to Omega Mart, an immersive, exploratory exhibit created by the art collective known as Meow Wolf, and we may check out the newly-opened Sphere, a multi-sensory experience that resembles virtual reality, but on a colossal scale. 

Research and Capstone Experience

In the spring semester, you and your peers will produce a fully staged magic show, including illusions, music, sound, lighting, props, and narrative or dramatic elements. You’ll be able to show off the individually curated tricks you mastered during the fall semester—and perhaps introduce new ones to the show, too.