Barron of Blog Wife, Kids, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Criss Angel Street Magic

Criss Angel is a street performer who walks around and performs illusions. While he does suffer from overacting (not quite David-Copperfield-level hand gestures, but close), his illusions are amazing to me because they are performed outside of a controlled environment with people watching him from many different angles.

One of his more impressive illusions is a levitation of several feet off of the ground [2.5mb]. The clip, taken from an A&E special called "MindFreak", is pretty cool by itself (if you can ignore the "I'm a bad-ass goth street magician" attitude and acting); but what makes it even better is that I have found a clip of him explaining exactly how the trick is done! You can watch the spoiler video here [4.2mb] (don't watch until you have seen the actual illusion from the previous clip).

I actually find that knowing how an illusion is performed makes the trick even more interesting because you can step back from the awestruck crowd and see the wizard behind the curtain. Very revealing of how little it takes to fool our senses.