Thierry Collet, a magician with false transhumanist tunes

• That happiness (with your sensors)

  , at the Théâtre du Rond-Point until November 6, explores the links between magic and new technologies.

• A one-hour show that leads the public by the nose.

• 20 Minutes

  met the mentalist Thierry Collet for the occasion.

A little transhumanism, a hint of hacking and a lot of illusions. Thierry Collet enchants an incredulous audience in

at the Théâtre du Rond-Point until November 6. It's hard to spot what comes under technology, traditional magic tricks, distraction or manipulation of language, but one thing is certain, the more the performance advances, the more spectacular the tricks become.

The staging is skilfully orchestrated.

“There is a dimension of mentalism called dual reality, where everyone does not perceive the effects the same way, especially the people who are on stage and those who are in the room.

You have to understand exactly how each other's brains work to create the illusion in both places at the same time, ”he explains.

And technology is creating trouble.

“I would say that anything goes when you are a magician.

I give the impression that things are true, but everything is an illusion, ”he smiles at

, between two sips of his long coffee, while we try, in vain, to wrest the truth from him behind his towers.

"I rather want to disturb, to awaken the critical mind of the public"

On the refined stage of the Champs Elysées theater, the mentalist, trained at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art, creates an atmosphere halfway between theatrical tradition and that of illusion to tell a story with a drawer. The highly written show engages the public in a dialogue between these two arts. A first failed card trick (on purpose), which questions the magician's cognitive limits, seals his pact with new technologies. He thus navigates between the small and the great history of illusion, recounting his improbable virtual encounter with Dai Vernon, a Canadian conjurer who died in 1992. An authentic anecdote that allows Thierry Collet to explore the world of artificial intelligence and chatbots that have the power to resuscitate the dead.

Result: we no longer know which of the man or the machine achieves feats, but amazement seizes the room.

By what process does the mentalist recover the personal data of a spectator who has gone to drink a beer with his phone in his pocket?

How does his assistant Marc Rigaud get to know the Wikipedia page on which another member of the public stopped?

To believe that in the background, Thierry Collet lectures on the importance of protecting his personal data.

“I rather want to disturb, to awaken the critical mind of the public.

I don't do pedagogy, ”he retorts.

Technology simplifies procedures while magic enables storytelling.

Of the apology for transhumanism?

"Some people have told me that I was advocating transhumanism," he is surprised. And, indeed, two towers, which play with the idea of ​​a real world duplicated in the virtual, seem straight out of an episode of

. A spectator whose face has been scanned feels all the “physical” sensations of his digital double. When the magician touches the scanned face on the screen, the guinea pig feels it physically. Was he hypnotized? Did they put invisible sensors on his body without his knowledge? We'll never know. On the same principle, the last round scans the wallet of a member of the public to create a virtual copy, also projected on the screen. The assistant magician, in videoconference, has fun opening the virtual wallet. He inserts his business card and removes the credit card. When the worried owner retrieves the original wallet, which has not moved from the scene, the business card has replaced his bank card. Flip flop.

Thierry Collet plays with the idea of ​​the digital double which so appeals to the technoprophetists of Silicon Valley.

Can we really duplicate an object and its content using technology?

Our little finger tells us "no", but Thierry Collet will not tell us the reverse of these two tricks.

"I do a lot of monitoring, I go to a lot of conventions, magic and hacking conventions, and I catch technological solutions before they are accessible to the general public", explains this technophile magician who does not imagine letting go new technologies anytime soon.

We could well find him in ten years with a robot as an assistant capable of reading the minds of the public.

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