Category: Hearing

Magic of the Senses

smackenz/ / Hearing, Illusions, Magic tricks, Posts, Vision

Sometimes the brain gets confused by visual information, in the same way as with sensory illusions and magic tricks (see our blog for Sensory illusions before and after vision and Magic without vision).

In this post, life-long magician “The Fantastic Kent Cummins!” reflects on how his brain is sometimes tricked when he has lost more vision. And on how this is similar to when it is fooled by sensory illusions and magic tricks. Kent Cummins has been a magician for more than 75 years. Amongst other things, using the fascination and fun of magic to teach children about their eyes. And winning the international Auditory Challenge in 2024. About 25 years ago, Kent was diagnosed with Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD). AMD affects people’s central vision. For example, making it difficult for them to recognise faces and read regular print. Loss of eyesight is gradual: the first symptom is often blurred or distorted vision. AMD rarely leads to blindness.

“The hand is quicker than the eye. That’s why there are so many black eyes!”

It’s a very old joke…and it isn’t even based on fact. The hand is not actually quicker than the eye … unless, like me, you are visually impaired.

Losing one’s sight is not a laughing matter.

It must be magic!

I have been a magician for more than 75 years. (I performed my first magic trick in 1949, at age six.)

As a young man, I had better than 20-20 vision, which probably helped me learn and perform sleight of hand and other magic tricks and illusions. At age 60, I was diagnosed with AMD (Age-Related Macular Degeneration). For many years, it was just a diagnosis … I had not lost enough vision to even notice it.

But in my seventies, I started noticing the decreasing vision more and more. I needed stronger reading glasses, and better magnifiers. Fortunately, I am retired from the US Army as a Lieutenant Colonel, and the Veterans Administration (VA) provides all of my vision care.

The Magician with a Vision

When rolled up from the bottom and secured with two small rubber bands, the “Mr. See It-flyer” becomes a magic wand. (The Fantastic Magic Center)

When I became a full-time professional magician in 1986, I was hired by Texas State Optical (TSO) to be the third of three magicians who taught kids about their eyes through performing specially-themed magic shows. Our character was called, “Mr. See It, the Magician with a Vision,” and we also each had a small rabbit named, “Iris the Eye Bunny.”

During the next three years, Iris and I did more than 500 shows throughout four states. (Texas State Optical also had stores in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.) I wrote a song called “The Eyeball Rap” which taught kids about the parts of the eye, and I was well-paid … until TSO was bought out by an international conglomerate, and all of these programs were cancelled.

Ironically, nearly forty years later, I have become “The Magician with LOW Vision.”

I wear a button that says, “I Have Low Vision.” But for several years, I did not wear it on my magician costume, because as a magician, I should be all-powerful. Then last year I realized that even Superman had his Kryptonite. When I started wearing the button during my magic shows, and doing an Eye Chart trick while explaining why I wore the button, I discovered that kids related to me better … even sharing their own stories of needing to wear glasses.

Seeing is believing

Magic is typically a visual performing art. Although magicians will use all of the senses to entertain (and fool) their audiences, magic tricks are usually understood by the spectator’s vision. That’s why they came up with the expression, “The hand is quicker than the eye.”

But as I already noted, saying that is just another way to fool someone. The real secret is more likely to involve misdirection than quickness of the hand.

Auditory Illusions

A popular auditory illusion is that created by a ventriloquist, when they make it appear that sounds are coming from somewhere other than their vocal cords. When watching a skilled ventriloquist, we forget that the “dummy” is not real. It’s called suspension of disbelief, and it explains why we also cry at sad movies…even when we know that it is just a made-up story.

But ventriloquists do typically rely on the audience being able to see the prop being manipulated. A ventriloquist named Ian Varella was fond of blowing up a balloon and squeezing the neck of the balloon as the air went out, making a distinctive squealing sound. But the audience laughed when the sound continued even after there was no air left in the balloon! That’s right, Ian was making the sound with his mouth…not the balloon. (Ian was also an accomplished magician.)

The Magic of AMD

I see things which are not there…and sometimes don’t see things that are definitely there.

The first time I noticed this was more than ten years ago, when I was getting ready to exit my driveway onto the road ahead. I looked both right and left, confirming that I saw no cars in either direction. But just as I started to enter the road, a car came zooming by from my right, honking its horn and no doubt cursing at me.

Why didn’t I see the car? Because at first it happened to be in my blind spot, the portion of my macula which no longer provides information to my brain. So, the brain just filled in more empty road!

The next episode happened when I walked out of my front door to check the mail in the mailbox on the front curb. But the mailbox was gone. I was not too surprised, since boisterous teens sometimes had fun by driving down the street and hitting mailboxes with a baseball bat. But I was surprised when I blinked my eyes and the mailbox reappeared…just like magic!

No, I do not drive any more. You’re welcome.

A less dangerous but perhaps humorous thing happened when I needed to use a public restroom. I clearly saw the sign, which said, “MEN.” But as I started to enter, I noticed women exiting. That’s right, the “WO…” had been in my blind spot!

It has been fascinating, learning how my brain can fool a life-long magician!

 

See our blog for Activities; especially 73-75.

 

Some suggestions for further listening, reading, and watching:

Ian Varella – Ventriloquist

See What I See: AMD

The Fantastic Magic Center

The Magician’s Code – Kent Cummins

Association strategies in crossmodal metaphors

smackenz/ / Crossmodal correspondences, Flavour, Haptic touch, Hearing, Metaphor, Multisensory, Posts, Smell, Taste, Vision

Several correspondences between the senses exist. For example, transferring information about shape between touch and vision. Associating the sound of spoken words and visual shapes (as in the Bouba/Kiki-effect).

Rounded blob and spiky blob
(Bouba [left] and Kiki [right])
And, subjectively, the scent of a specific perfume with the feel of velvet fabrics. (See our blog for the scientific approach, Crossmodal correspondences between the senses, On the intriguing association between sounds and colours, and Multisensory processing.)

These correspondences are visible in crossmodal metaphors too. That is, when people are using words and phrases related to one sense to describe an experience from another sense. Like when they label visual colours, through words that are specific to the sense of hearing, calling them “loud” and “mute”. And define a sound through the sense of touch, as with “a smooth voice”.

 

I have invited researchers connected with the Diverse-ability Interaction Lab to write this post on how people generate and interpret crossmodal metaphors. These researchers have identified seven association strategies. The Diverse-ability Interaction Lab aims to change the design of interactive technologies in ways that make them inclusive, both for people who are disabled and people who are non-disabled. This post is written by Tegan Roberts-Morgan, University of Bristol.

 

“Blue tastes like salt, it just does”. That is what one participant told me when I asked them what blue might taste like. We all make connections between our senses. A citrus smell may be sharp; someone may have a sweet voice, or red might remind you of anger. We call these cross-sensory metaphors, as they use words from one sense to describe something which is typically associated with another sense. As a HCI researcher in sensory technologies, this is important, as understanding how these metaphors are created can give us an insight into the methods behind our sensory thinking, supporting us to hopefully design better sensory technologies.

 

We use association strategies to represent the different methods people use to create connections between different senses. These strategies help us to begin to understand the reasons behind why we make the cross-sensory metaphors that we do. If we can understand why the connections are made, then this can be leveraged in the design of technologies that support communication. To explore these strategies, we designed tasks that encourage participants to think in cross-sensory terms. For example, in Sense-O-Nary, participants are given an item related to a specific sense (e.g. the colour red, a pyramid, or a lemon scent) and asked to describe it using a sense that is not typically associated with it (e.g. what does red smell like, or what does a pyramid sound like?). They then share their cross-sensory metaphor with another team, who must guess which item is being described. This task, along with others we used, helped us to identify the 7 different strategies people use when creating cross-sensory metaphors.

  • Participants used personal stories and memories, and we labelled these as the personal connection strategy. One participant, for example, said that the lemon scent reminded them about when they went “on holiday to the Mediterranean” or “this reminds me of my friend”.
  • Participants also created cross-sensory metaphors using the familiar experience strategy. This is when the metaphor created uses a common object, emotion, texture etc. “This smells like a banana smoothie” or “this reminds me of a marshmallow” and even “this tastes like soy sauce”.
  • Some participants rely on some basic primitives to make an association, which we labelled as the sensory features strategy. This includes words like “sharp”, “smooth”, “soft” “bitter” and “sweet”.
  • Participants also used the valence strategy, using negative or positive words in the description, for example “I like this”, “I love this“ and “this would taste horrible”.
  • Another approach was using vocalisation. This involved participants using a sound or noise as
  • opposed to words to describe an item like “this sounds like Krrrr and tssssss”, “boooom” or when one child just screamed to describe what red may sound like.
  • Some participants chose not to use the sense that we originally asked them to use; they would instead use words from a different sense. We called this grasping for another sense. In one study we asked participants to describe how red would taste and they said, “this tastes strong”.
  • Finally, some participants did not only use their words to communicate their connection, but they also used their body. When they did this, they used the embodied action strategy. An example includes when one participant said green “feels like this” and then stroked the floor back and forth.

 

We believe that understanding and using these strategies can support designers, educators, and researchers in creating experiences that align with how people naturally relate the senses. For instance, we found that most adults used personal connections when describing how something would sound, so incorporating prompts or features that relate to a memory the person may have could support their communication.

 

We have found that age plays a vital role in what association strategies a person uses. Children tend to use familiar experiences the majority of the time, describing the item using something common. Whereas young adults (18-25 years olds) also used familiar experiences, but used personal connections, additionally, to create their metaphor. And finally older adults (65-80 years old) used a much wider range of association strategies, with sensory features being used more often.

 

These association strategies can be applied in any context that involves multisensory interactions, from educational devices that support children learning about their phonics by using shapes and audio, boards that can help children explain how their pain feels by using scents, shapes, colours etc., and accessible technology to support communication between children who are sighted and children who are visually impaired. Ultimately, association strategies give us a window into how people construct meaning across their senses. By recognising and applying these strategies, we can potentially design experiences that resonate more deeply, communicate more clearly, and build richer, more inclusive multisensory worlds.

 

See our blog for Activities; especially 70-72.