Despite the perennial reports of magic’s demise at the hands of both old and new media Performance Magic is more popular and inventive than ever before. It is a performance art with a vibrant culture of live performances, popular TV shows, and emerging forms that use the street and the internet to create unique performances, to stage challenging effects and to engage new audiences and practitioners. The popularity of contemporary performance magic now rivals the magic assemblage of the nineteenth century’s ‘golden age’ of magic and certainly overshadows it both invention and in its astonishing scope.

The Journal of Performance Magic focuses on a multidisciplinary and contemporary approach to the field. Covering the influence, legacy and future of performance magic on wider performing arts practice and other diverse academic disciplines. In recent years the academic study of performance magic has made exciting creative links within emerging disciplines; such links include the cognitive sciences, architectural design, and emerging technologies. The Journal of Performance Magic seeks to strengthen these links as well as encourage reflection on areas of performance magic not already covered in publication and develop new perspectives on areas already heavily researched.