We’ve had ourselves an eventful day; Look at this mind-breaking GIF we just came across (via Boing Boing):
There’s no way that’s real, right? The finger control required to make a playing card look like it’s on a stand while moving your hand around it seems otherworldly, but it turns out that it’s totally possible, and we’ve actually seen this guy before.
His name is Zach Mueller, and he’s an apparent master at what is known as cardistry, the performance art of card flourishing, or in layman’s terms, doing neat stuff with cards in your fingers. Above is the clip that the GIF was taken from, and it proves that Mueller has better dexterity than your average court stenographer. Here’s another video demonstrating his immense skill:
In this one, he effortlessly splits the deck and fans it out with just four fingers, makes a card look like it’s literally tied to a string, creates the illusion that he has telekinetic powers and is able to manipulate cards without touching them, and creates all sorts of visually appealing configurations of cards in his hands.
This is the type of thing we’d love to be able to do, but guess what? It takes a lot of practice, and we might be too busy playing Pokémon Go for that right now. Still, for those of you with more discipline than we have, Fontaine Cards, which Mueller founded, has a bunch of tutorials available on YouTube to get you started, including the one below, which shows you how to do the Spring, which you’ve probably seen before:
For those interested in being able to impress anybody at any time, here is a great place to begin your cardistry journey.
Featured image: Kuma Films
