Category: Magic tricks

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

Magic without vision: Can you fool the ear like you fool the eye?

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

Sometimes the brain gets it all wrong because it misperceives conflicting information from one or more of the senses (see our blog for Sensory illusions before and after vision). And sometimes because it is tricked by a magician. Typically, through vision.

So, are magic tricks possible without vision?

“When it comes right to it, it’s a trick for the eye. I mean, it’s a magic trick, right? So, they trick your eyes. (…) So, if you’re blind, I don’t think that’s really going to work for you. You’re never going to know what just happened. You can hear about it, but that’s not going to be a big deal for you” (according to Tommy Edison, who is born blind).

However, the brain can be tricked through the sense of touch too. For example, to feel three human fingerbones move in the palm of the hand, and two pieces of rope go straight through the neck.

“So you could show me something and show me how it changes or whatever but at any point, if I’m not touching the thing. You can just switch it just like that. And I wouldn’t know wiser” (explained by Tommy Edison, who is born blind).

But what about the other senses?

This time, Associate Professor Gustav Kuhn, University of Plymouth sheds some light on tricking the brain through the sense of hearing. Anchored in both magic and science, Gustav Kuhn has established Science of Magic, he is the Director of the MAGIC-Lab, and he is the funding member and President of The Science of Magic Association. Furthermore, Gustav has published numerous academic articles and books. And his work has been featured in the national media (e.g., by the BBC and the Guardian).

Magic is an artform that allows us to experience the impossible. At its core lies a powerful contradiction between what we see and what we believe to be possible. Most magic tricks exploit our visual perception: we see a coin vanish or a rabbit appear in a hat. But what happens when we remove sight from the equation? Can magic still work if it’s entirely auditory? And if not—why?

Investigating how magic might operate without vision offers more than practical benefits—it opens the door to fundamental questions about how different senses process information, and how much we trust each of them. For centuries, artists and scientists alike have tried to translate between the senses, asking whether sound can be “seen” or images can be “heard.” This research can support the development of sensory substitution tools—but it also highlights important limits in how different senses convey information.

Auditory-only magic tricks

In 2024, we launched a bold experiment: an international competition to create the world’s first auditory-only magic trick. The rules were strict—no visuals, no speech, no language. Just sound. Could the ear be fooled as convincingly as the eye?  Magic is full of non-verbal visual illusions—a vanishing coin, a colour-changing silk—but could pure sound evoke that same sense of wonder?

The challenge captured global attention. Magicians, sound artists, and psychologists all stepped up with creative and clever ideas. One trick stood out for its clever use of an auditory illusion. In this “trick” the magician walks around the blindfolded spectator, making a sound, and the spectator tracks their position (link to more information about the competition)—until, suddenly, the sound shifts and the magician appears to “teleport” to another spot, creating a surprising and disorienting effect. The trick was clever, but since it relied on language, it did not fully meet the competition criteria. Despite our best efforts, no submission delivered a powerful, language-free illusion. We awarded a prize for ingenuity, but the core goal remained unmet. Still, this wasn’t failure—it was insightful and what we predicted

Nearly all well-known magic tricks are visual. As a result, people with visual impairments are often excluded from fully engaging with magic performances. This isn’t just an issue of entertainment; magic can foster joy, curiosity, and even wellbeing. Ensuring access to those experiences is an important step toward inclusivity.

Both our eyes and ears are easily fooled by perceptual illusions, though we rarely notice them. For example, when listening to music on headphones, sounds can seem to come from different directions. This illusion is created by adjusting the volume and timing of sounds in each ear, and there are lots of other auditory illusions that are just as powerful as their visual counterparts. So, the rarity of auditory magic tricks isn’t due to a lack of auditory illusions.

One possibility is for the lack of auditory magic tricks is that auditory perception simply |doesn’t produce the same kind of cognitive surprise as vision. We know our ears can miss things. In the classic cocktail party effect, for instance, we often fail to notice conversations around us until we hear our name. Unlike visual failures, these auditory lapses don’t feel shocking. We accept them as normal. That means there’s less room for magic to create the emotional jolt that makes a trick truly effective. Both our eyes and ears are vulnerable to deception, but we seem to trust our vision more. When something vanishes from sight, it feels like it’s gone. But when a sound disappears, we simply assume the source has stopped making noise—not that the object has vanished. Many magic tricks revolve around manipulating physical objects—making them appear, disappear, or transform. These feats are inherently more compatible with how we interpret visual information.

The competition revealed just how much magic depends on vision, and how deeply we trust what we see compared to what we hear. In trying to trick the ear, we uncovered something fundamental about how we experience the world—and the unique role vision plays in shaping belief.

Toward a New Kind of Magic

We believe magic without sight is a frontier worth exploring—not just for theoretical insight, but for practical innovation. Developing magic for people with visual impairments is about more than accessibility; it’s about reimagining what magic can be. It invites us to consider whether the ear and other senses such as touch and smell, too, can be deceived in ways that are joyful, meaningful, and profound. To do this, we’ll need to understand how people with blindness experience magic—something that can only be achieved through close collaboration between psychologists, magicians, and individuals with visual impairments. In doing so, we not only open the world of magic to those who experience the world differently—we also expand the very boundaries of what magic, as an art and a science, can do.

Gustav has also very kindly suggested some very interesting materials for further listening, reading, and watching:

See our blog for Activities; especially 67-69.