The Big Blind Friday Ep.3

Limitations, and how they can help us

Hi Owen,,

Biz here. In this email we talk about limitations and creating (magic). We also got a little something planned for you which we're excited to share (but more on that later). If you want, you can also skip to the end of this e-mail 📚.

Back in 2017, when I met Spanish magician Mario Lopez in Barcelona, I found out that once a year Dani DaOrtiz, together with a bunch of other magicians, gather up at a cabin in the woods for a week in order to create magic, talk and hang out.

One of the things they like doing in these sessions is setting themselves different limits and trying to create a magic trick within those boundaries. A few examples I can recall him telling me were:

• having to vanish a playing card from the table without gimmicks and without lifting the card off the table
• color changing a playing card in the spectator's hand
• going through Hofsinzer's 10 card problems and finding new solutions

I have heard of artists constraining themselves in order to become more creative and, apparently, limitations are good for your creative mind! Buffer published an article about this in which they talk about the psychology of limitation and why constraints make us more creative.

Says Helen Wells, from hellenwellsartists, when talking about how it feels to have infinite possibilities and permutations when making art.

In an interview with Adobe about constraints, Brooklyn-based designer Damien Correll talks about how he finds [constraints] make the process a little more enjoyable and the final output is usually something he's more proud of.

If you're interested in these sort of stuff, a few notable projects to check out are: "Gadsby" by Ernest Vincent Wright, "Life: A Users Manual" by Georges Perec or "99 Ways to Tell a Story" a graphic novel by Matt Madden.

The magic community also has it's own share of wacky people trying out zany things like these. Either pulling off 365 Days of Magic like Eric Leclerc or Antonio Bourgeois, or creating a card trick in one hour like Steven Bridges.

I've always been attracted to challenges and people doing them and this inspired me at a very early age to give these sort of projects a go. Back in 2009, when I was 14, I started a project called 365 hours of magic where I challenged myself to create a new trick every day until the time of all videos would reach 365 hours.

Four years later, in 2013, I challenged myself to create magic for 24 hours straight without moving from my chair! The entire thing was chronicled in both video and e-book format.

Tune in next week when I will share with you 6 minutes from the 24 hour challenge and give you as A GIFT a few pages from the book that I published at that time.

Until next time!

That was it for this week. Every week is different so make sure to watch out for the next episode of Big Blind Friday. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

xoxo

Connect with us

Bigblindmedia | Email | Website