Look at me, I’m Zee!

Picture 1

Picture 2
 LOOK AT ME! I’M STILL ZEE!
You thought I was just dropping the coin into my left hand but I kept it in my right hand! You just
assumed that I dropped the coin from my right hand into my left hand because that is the logical
conclusion after seeing those two pictures.

I will explain why I am doing this on the next page, but just keep in mind that you tricked yourself
into thinking that I transferred the coin to my left hand when, in reality, I just hid the coin in my
right hand.

Picture 3
 Photographic Memories
This essay is not about actual photographic memory, but check out these pictures!

PIX

Although we might think we see things like how cameras would record things, our eyes don’t
work like cameras. Unlike cameras, we miss A LOT of what happens in front of us.

I won’t comment on how eyes and memories work in everyday lives because they work
differently according to the situation, but all eyes kind of work in a similar way when watching
magic tricks.

Spectators will only remember your performances by key frames like a picture book.

You might wonder why I am talking about this seemingly pointless subject, but you will need this
information to understand what is written after this page.

Let’s get into the real deal.

 Limitations of human eyes
Under the right circumstances, one can make others hallucinate without punching them on their
jaws or offering them drugs.

Although it sounds like a weird statement that nobody should care about, we can become more
“scientific” performers who can design even more intricate routines/choreographs if we can
understand human eyes a little more.

Magicians have been tricking human eyes for thousands of years but cannot offer any
explanation better than “the big motion covers the small motion” when someone asks how to
trick others’ eyes.

Peripheral Vision

Peripheral vision can be understood as indirect vision. In simple language, when you stare at
something, only the point of fixation is super clear and the rest of the vision is kind of blurry.
Those blurry parts are what we call, peripheral vision.

If you want to get even more technical, then here is a picture that you can check out so you can
use cool vocabularies when you are discussing this subject with other people.
Background Story

I rarely get fooled by pure sleight of hand magic, especially pure sleight of hand coin magic.
However, a great friend of mine who I almost never talk to but always talk about from Spain
fooled me with an extremely simple yet interesting coin false transfer that he learned from Gabi
Pareras. This great friend’s name is Victor Pina if you are wondering.

Victor and I were having a casual skype session, but we were both fidgeting with our decks
without talking to each other like how most skype magic sessions end up after a couple of
hours.

“Yo, Zee. Check this out,” said Victor in a nice pajama which I usually consider a t-shirt in the
daytime.

Victor flicked a coin into the air with his right hand, and flicked it into his left hand as soon as he
caught the falling coin. I saw the coin in the air the first time he flicked it, and I saw the coin got
flicked from his right hand to his left hand. I swear I saw the coin flying into his left hand, but the
coin remained in his right hand.

#CRAZY

Method: Easy Version

1. Flick a coin into the air

2. Catch the coin
3. Pretend to flick it into the other hand
4. The End

You can try to do it but it will never look good without knowing the thought process behind this
incredible coin vanish.

Method: Elaborated Version

1. Flick a coin into the air ​and your spectators’ eyes will follow the coin. This is the first
interesting thing that is going to get memorized by your spectators. The picture of a coin
in the air will get painted in your spectators’ memories.
2. Catch the coin
3. Pretend to flick the coin into the other hand ​as soon as you catch the coin because
spectators’ brains are still processing the image from before which is an image of the
coin in mid air. If you do it fast enough with proper rhythm, then what your spectators are
going to see and memorize is an image of you flicking a coin into air and an image of
your other hand catching the coin after the second flick. Of course they shouldn’t see a
coin fly into the other hand because that does not actually happen. However, since 2
flicks happen so quickly and, unlike cameras, their eyes won’t be able to catch all the
 details that happen during this time frame. That is why their brains get these 2 flicks
confused and create an illusion of the coin flying from one hand to another when the coin
actually always stays in the same hand.
4. The End

You might be able to pull off this false transfer now, but there are a few more elements that I
want to talk about in procedure.

Method: As Elaborated As I Can

1. Flick a coin into the air and your spectators’ eyes will follow the coin. This is the first
interesting thing that is going to get memorized by your spectators. The picture of a coin
in the air will get painted in your spectators’ memories. ​When you flick the coin, your
eyes should follow the coin so your spectators follow the coin too.
2. Catch the coin ​but your eyes should still be staring at the highest point the coin reached
in the air so your spectators are still looking that empty space in the air rather than
following the coin
3. Pretend to flick the coin into the other hand as soon as you catch the coin because
spectators’ brains are still processing the image from before which is an image of the
coin in mid air. If you do it fast enough with proper rhythm, then what your spectators are
going to see and memorize is an image of you flicking a coin into air and an image of
your other hand catching the coin after the second flick. Of course they shouldn’t see a
coin fly into the other hand because that does not actually happen. However, since 2
flicks happen so quickly and, unlike cameras, their eyes won’t be able to catch all the
details that happen during this time frame. That is why their brains get these 2 flicks
confused and create an illusion of the coin flying from one hand to another when the coin
actually always stays in the same hand. ​You should still be staring at the empty space
even after you catch the coin and execute the false transfer. About half a second after
the false transfer, you have to fix your eyes on your left closed fist to direct all the
attention to your closed fist. It should feel like your eyes have 300 ping and they react
0.3 seconds slower than usual.
4. The End. ​If you have done what I have described here, then your spectators’ brains
should have painted an image of a coin flying from your right hand to your left hand.
They will swear that they saw the coin flew into the left hand. Although I might sound like
a delusional person right now, you will get convinced that it will work in real life after
reading a few more pages of this book.

Why Though?

If you are interested in learning more about the subject of peripheral vision, then you can check
out my citations below. Every single paper is an interesting read.

If you don’t have time to read all those research papers, then I will draw a conclusion for you
with extra ideas from myself. Please read the research papers if you want to form your
independent ideas and theories, but I am going to force my ideas on those who are not willing to
be independent!

- Your brain makes up most of what you “see”

- Getting hallucinated without help of chemical substances or physical forces is relatively
easy as long as you know how to work with peripheral vision
- Use of delayed eye movements can interrupt the normal viewing pattern of spectators,
so they will miss a lot of details of your performances which forces their brain to imagine
what might have happened there. We can take advantage of this brain’s “flaw” and make
them think that they saw whatever we want them to see.
Why Should You Care?

Although what I have been talking about is kind of a known fact, I doubt most people know
exactly why misdirections work.

By understanding why exactly certain things happen, we might be able to come up with different
ways of using those things or simply get better at those things.

It might sound vague but please keep reading...

Misdirection

When we talk about misdirection, we usually think of it as a simple “look over there rather than
staring at my hands” or “the bigger action covers the smaller action”

However, how often do you actually get misdirected by other magicians? I rarely get misdirected
because my peripheral vision still exists. Although peripheral vision might not be as reliable as
central vision, I can still see people doing sneaky work with another hand while desperately
trying to direct my attention to somewhere else. Unless the whatever I am looking at in my
central vision is extremely interesting, my peripheral vision will always catch most things that
happen within my vision.

Misdirection is not simply making spectators look away from your dirty secrets.

You have to understand how our attentions work in order to do proper misdirections that work
virtually 100% of the time. In my opinion, the best way to learn misdirection is to watch other
people utilizing misdirections. I am sure you are not properly misdirected most of the time. You
see the magicians doing sneaky moves, but you choose to not mention it because you assume
you only see it because you are also a magician.

Laypeople also have functioning eyes and brains. Regardless how high you raise your right
hand with a glass of wine, their attention will get ​forced​ to be on your left hand which is
low-key-ly trying to steal a phone on the table.
If you really want to check if you are good at misdirections, then do what you would do in
performances but actually try to steal something from your friend. If you get caught, then you
have been doing misdirection wrong, and most past spectators probably saw you doing sneaky
stuff but never mentioned it to you out of respect. Please return the stolen properties after the
party though!
If you are interested in this topic, here are some papers that you can read:

Pinto, Y., Otten, M., Paffen, C. L., Kanai, R., & Seth, A. K. (2016, November 14). The
Uniformity Illusion: Central Stimuli Can Determine Peripheral Perception - Marte Otten,
Yair Pinto, Chris L. E. Paffen, Anil K. Seth, Ryota Kanai, 2017. Retrieved January 14,
2021, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797616672270

Greenwood, J. A., Szinte, M., Sayim, B., & Cavanagh, P. (2017, April 25). Variations in
crowding, saccadic precision, and spatial localization reveal the shared topology of spatial
vision. Retrieved January 14, 2021, from https://www.pnas.org/content/114/17/E3573

Caputo, G. B. (2015, June 11). Dissociation and hallucinations in dyads engaged through
interpersonal gazing. Retrieved January 14, 2021, from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165178115003212?via%3Dihub

Gomez, J., Barnett, M., & Grill-Spector, K. (2019, May 06). Extensive childhood
experience with Pokémon suggests eccentricity drives organization of visual cortex.
Retrieved January 14, 2021, from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0592-8

Palczewska, G., Vinberg, F., Stremplewski, P., Bircher, M. P., Salom, D., Komar, K., . . .
Palczewski, K. (2014, December 16). Human infrared vision is triggered by two-photon
chromophore isomerization. Retrieved January 14, 2021, from
https://www.pnas.org/content/111/50/E5445

Shany Grossman, C. (n.d.). Where Does Time Go When You Blink? - Shany Grossman,
Chen Gueta, Slav Pesin, Rafael Malach, Ayelet N. Landau, 2019. Retrieved January 14,
2021, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797619842198

Nair, A., & Brang, D. (2019, March 07). Inducing synesthesia in non-synesthetes:
Short-term visual deprivation facilitates auditory-evoked visual percepts. Retrieved
January 14, 2021, from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810018304410?dgcid=raven_
sd_via_email

Vetter, P., Smith, F. W., & Muckli, L. (2014, May 22). Decoding Sound and Imagery
Content in Early Visual Cortex. Retrieved January 14, 2021, from
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.04.020