Crafting Magic 2.0 – The Thickening
Poster Author(s):
Institution(s):
The aim of Crafting Magic is to create a magic effect, successfully perform the effect, and, finally, to produce a Grimoire that encodes the crafted magic in such a way that others may successfully perform the effect. Working in two cults, players craft forms of ‘everyday magic’, their origin myths, their technologies of enchantment and the sensory atmospheres (cultic milieu) in which to practise them. To craft magic, we must work outside of our fields and remain open to engaging with known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Along the way, we will learn about a wide array of theories and practices of
magic.
Crafting Magic mainly operates withing the realm of the ‘everyday’, but flirts with theories and examples of ritual, transcendental, skeptical, capitalist and secular magics. Transcendental storytelling relinquishes some authorial control to magical actants. Leaving some things to chance is an important component of crafting magic. Remember that objects, such as playing cards, can make choices so we don’t have to. Allow the magic to choose us.
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The Crafting Magic 2.0 poster links to the art project’s website, Shift/Work: Crafting Magic https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/craftingmagic/ which is written and maintained by Prof Neil Mulholland and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 It also links to project repo https://gitlab.com/fetidom/crafting-magic-2-0 wherein the playing cards are held. The cards are OERs that can be printed to Craft Magic.
The repo includes a set of modded cards designed specifically for Crafting Magic 2.0 The Thickening, a fork of the project, held at Tamworth Central, Ontario as part of Neil Mulholland’s residency and exhibition in the summer of 2025. Crafting Magic 2.0 The Thickening was curated by Dr Neven Lochhead (Montréal, QC.) For info on Crafting Magic 2.0 The Thickening see: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/neilmulholland/2025/07/19/crafting-magic-kingston You will also find a talk here about the whole project held at Kingston Frontenac Public Library, 130 Johnson Street, Kingston, Ontario K7L 1X8 on the 19th of July 2025.
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Title: Crafting Magic
Medium: Modifiable OER (CC BY-NC-SA)
Artist: Neil Mulholland
Dimensions: Variable
Date: 2023 ∞