Solving the Cube…

In my continuing quest to make things play bigger, I’ve finally altered a trick that I used close up to hopefully have it play for a bigger audience. The trick started as Huge Shelley’s iCube trick. The problem with his set up was that I found using my phone as a thumper was unreliable. The bluetooth would drop, or I wouldn’t necessarily be able to feel the vibrations.

I then got a ProMystic MD Mini, which is completely reliable. I just didn’t like the look of the cube, so I put the guts into the shell that came with icube and have a little prop that works great for close up!

The next challenge is how to make it play bigger. Right now the cube is about 3/4 of an each on each side. The obvious way it to scale it up to a bigger cube. For that I picked up a Meffert’s Oskar’s Treasure Cube with is a Rubik’s Cube that had a compartment inside.

I put the MD Mini that’s inside the iCube shell into the treasure cube and secured it with sponge. Now I that can be seen in a bigger venue. The next challenge is to figure out a way to show the selected side of the cube. This was a bit of a challenge because if it’s held up and show by someone in the audience, they won’t necessarily do a good job displaying it.

To solve this, I went with an obvious solution, and that’s to put the die is a box with a lid.

The box was a very quick and simple 3D print to design and it only displays one side. No I can simply ask the person to, “take off the lid and show it to the audience” and there’s no issue with displaying the selected color. As a bonus, if the trick ever fails me, I now have an out. I can use it like the old color block trick where you put the lid on the side!

Socially Distant Material…

The reality moving forward whether we like it or not will be shows that are socially distant. What that means is a gap between the performer and the audience and having to have people onstage stay somewhere between six and twenty five feet from you. What that means is people can still manipulate objects, they just need to do it from a distance.

That has me thinking of tricks that can be done with someone onstage, but on the opposite side of the stage and using props that I never touch. One of these tricks is Promystic’s Color Match. I did this trick for years, but it cycled out of the show a couple years ago. This fits the rules, it can be done at a distance and without any contact or sharing of the props.

I went out an bought a collapsible easel and 3D printed some cup holders for the easel.

One the right side (when facing the easel) is the cup full of pens and on the left is the empty cup. I have the cup on the left labeled “used”. The “used” pen bin is something that’s very common right now at stores and restaurants due COVID rules. It’s something 18 months ago would be strange, but something that people see often now. Even if they’ve never seen the two cup system at the store, it’s a very simple concept to grasp.

The cool thing is that this solves the problem with what to do with the pen after they use it during the Color Match trick in a logical manner.