April 22nd was a most extraordinary night. I had the honor to present at two different events with two most distinguished Nobel Laureates.
The evening started with a reception at the Century Club for Dr. Gerald Edelman. His Nobel prize was in medicine and then he went right into neuroscience from there, almost 40 years ago. He was hosting the board members of his Neurosciences Institute. He spoke about perception, and then asked me to explain the connection between magic and science from my perspective, based on my apprenticeship to the misdirection master Slydini. The group included people like Oliver Sacks, so it could not have been more exciting. After my talk, Dr. Edelman joined me for a brief Q&A session. Eric Edelman, one of Dr. Edelman’s sons, has been instrumental in helping me find the language to translate my deception model into language and concepts for scientists. He helped with arrangements that night too.
From the Century Club, I jumped in a car to Chelsea Piers for the annual ‘Stars of Stony Brook‘ gala, honoring Dr. C.N. Yang, a prominent theoretical physicist. His Ph.D was with Edward Teller at the University of Chicago, and then he was Enrico Fermi’s assistant for a few years before his many discoveries. I had been asked to incorporate Dr. Yang’s theories into a fun and funny presentation. At one point, Dr. Yang joined me on stage and helped me make objects float across the stage… breaking the laws of physics. Please submit any questions regarding parity violation, string theory, or the Yang-Mills theory (you know, non-Abelian gauge symmetry ;-)!). Many thanks to Peter Steinberg of the Brookhaven National Lab and Robert Crease of Stony Brook University who helped coach me on physics.
Below are some photos from both events:
Clockwise: Dr. Edelman presents to the board of the NSI;
Presenting on magic and perception; On stage with honoree Dr. Yang [image taken from video screen]; Stars of Stony Brook gala. (click to enlarge)
A few years ago I proposed an art and science conference to the Calder Foundation, a sort of meeting of the minds centered around the work of sculptor Alexander Calder. Last week, this idea came to fruition at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, thanks to the efforts of Vice Provost for the Arts Beth Turner and her team at the art museum, Vice President for Research Tom Skalak, the Calder Foundation, and our fantastic participants.
In addition to helping select the speakers for the conference, I moderated two panels - one on Art, Science and Innovation at Work, and one on Action and Perception. We brought down two art pieces from New York - O2 by Zilvinas Kempinas, and Small Sphere and Heavy Sphere by Alexander Calder.
Physicist Peter Steinberg from the Brookhaven Lab tweeted: “What a blur. Morning panel (me, Kempinas, mitton, Bart-smith) went, um, swimmingly once we noticed common interest in hydrodynamics.” A great time was had by all!
Crowd gathering to see Small Sphere and Heavy Sphere by Alexander Calder
(set in motion by Sandy Rower).
Just got back from the Gathering for Gardner in Atlanta, a recreational math conference that is held every other year in honor of the now 95-year old Martin Gardner. Gardner was the writer of the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American for over 25 years, and he’s the author of over 70 books on math and puzzles. Although Gardner himself no longer travels to the gathering, it is no exaggeration to say that G4G continues to attract the word’s foremost mathematicians, puzzlers, scientists, origami folders, artists and philosophers. Here is a small sampling of the people who attended this year – Stephen Wolfram, puzzle master Will Shortz, John Horton Conway and many others:
During the day there were presentations by the attendees, and at night there were magic and variety shows. My toy inventor friend Mark Setteducati is one of the main organizers, together with Tom Rodgers and Elwyn Berlekamp. For many years now, they have had me host the parlor magic show and the main stage show. This year we had two lovely Chinese magicians on the bill: Ruxian and Wang Lu. We traded magic secrets at a party at Tom Rodgers’ beautiful Japanese-style home outside of Atlanta.
Here are some pictures from G4G9 (click to enlarge):
L to R: Logo by Scott Kim; Ruxian does the Chinese Linking Rings; magic with silk scarves; card manipulations; post-show with Ruxian and Wang Lu, mathematician John Horton Conway and his son Gareth, Swedish magician Lennart Green, and G4G organizer Mark Setteducati.
[Photos by Wei Zhang and Peter Rasmussen]
It should be noted, by the way, that 8-year old Gareth Conway (pictured above) can recite the first 130 digits of pi in 40 seconds.
New York is an amazing place filled with hidden treasures. One of those treasures is the home theater in the loft of artist Suzanne Bocanegra and Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winning composer David Lang. Suzanne and I used to work together and she came to my panel discussion with Chuck Close and Adam Gopnik last summer and invited me to do a show in her home. Last Friday, about 90 people crammed into a space that normally holds 40-50 to see my new perception show, tentatively titled “Accepting Mystery”. We had a very diverse New York crowd, ranging from writers and scientists to fashion models and artists, and it was wonderful to be able to try out some new material and hang out with the audience afterwards.
Thank you all for supporting the show, and thank you - Suzanne and David - for your incredible generosity!!
L to R: Perception magic with Nino from Norway; optical illusion with Professor Stuart Firestein from Columbia University; prominent New Yorkers in the audience.
[click to enlarge]
We just had Fashion Week here in New York. Carolina Herrera was kind enough to invite me to her runway show in Bryant Park to see her beautiful new collection. I also had fun performing for Austrian supermodel Iris Strubegger and Marc Jacobs and his team at the premiere of the new fashion movie La Demimondaine at The Box. This innovative new film was shot on the Red Camera, a camera that is changing the fashion industry because it can shoot digital video, audio and stills at the same time.
Click here to watch the movie (shot at The Box) and here to watch a short clip about the making of the film.
The next part of my trip took me to the lovely town of Ayr in Scotland, where I shared haggis and magic stories with Andrew Galloway, a legendary misdirection expert who studied with the master John Ramsay. We had so much to talk about! Thank you, Andy, for your wonderful hospitality!
I have always wanted to see a pantomime in Scotland, and this year I was lucky enough to catch a performance of Robinson Crusoe and the Caribbean Pirates at the King’s Theatre in Edinburgh. The show did not disappoint… It was filled with topical references and outrageous comedy. Allan Stewart (as Robinson Crusoe’s mother) and Grant Stott (as Blackheart the Pirate) had the audience rolling in the aisles, and one of the highlights was when Stewart did his spot-on impression of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ superstar Susan Boyle.
(Find out here what happened when the real Ms. Boyle came to the show a week later).
From DC I flew to Holland to celebrate New Year’s with my in-laws. We were treated to a lot of snow and took these photos on a magical early-morning walk down the road that Susanna grew up on. The last shot is of one of the many windmills behind her childhood home (click to enlarge):
This is what happened on New Year’s Eve, when a neighbor shot his bottle rocket across the street instead of up in the air. Kaboom!
Cellist Sean Grissom’s ‘Holiday Vaudeville’ show at the Kennedy Center is now in its tenth year. I have been on it, together with the Alexandria Kleztet, for five of those years. It is such a fun show. We perform for two nights together and always have a packed house. Our day off is usually spent sightseeing in our nation’s capital. This year, we visited the Washington Monument.
Just managed to get a copy of this picture taken at the Galerie Gmurzynska party in Miami. This is the moment when Sylvester Stallone discovers that the signed and ripped-up photo of Rambo in his hand is now restored and mismatched, like a David Smith sculpture. That’s his lovely wife Jennifer beside him in the black dress. Peter Stevens of the David Smith Estate is looking on in the left of the picture.
Ben Davis said the kindest thing at the end of his review of Art Basel Miami:
“If you had to ask me the best thing I saw in Miami… I would say that it was the close-up magic of the amazing Mark Mitton, world-class magician who had been flown in from NYC to perform at some special events for the weekend! Seriously, if you ever get a chance, go see Mark Mitton. Very few artists are as good at their craft as Mark is at what he does. He has some interesting things to say about art too.”
As you can imagine, my mom was overjoyed. Me too. Ben is a fascinating guy. Check out the article that he wrote about art and craft.
