Magic in Pieces: An Analysis of Magic Trick Construction Using Artificial Intelligence as a Design Aid

Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques are successfully used for various design and optimisation tasks, and have previously been applied to design magic tricks. A magical effect is an event that the observer perceives as being outside the normal physical rules of the world. In this paper we revisit an AI framework that has been used to produce a two dimensional interlocking piece jigsaw design with two simultaneous solutions, one showing twelve identical shapes, the other only ten, giving rise to the believable illusion of the shapes vanishing. To achieve this effect the design framework enables the combination of both geometric optimisation constraints and constraints derived from empirically determined psychophysical and cognitive investigations. We further discuss the human factors that affect an observer’s perception of a magic trick, and how these observations can be used in a computational optimisation process. We also provide a more detailed analysis of the algorithms used to generate the magical effects.