Swiss is a sleight-of-hand performer specializing in close-up card magic. He has spoken and performed across the United States, including for Fortune-500 companies such as Adobe, and for the Smithsonian Institution, as well as for The Magic Castle. He has spoken at The New Yorker Festival. He is a frequent guest speaker at the EG creativity and innovation conference. His show of intimate sleight-of-hand magic, Magic: Close-up in Concert, ran for six months at the RainbowRoom in New York City. It was remounted in San Diego in 2017. Swiss is a co-founder and currently a co-producer and performer for Monday Night Magic, New York City's longest running Off-Broadway magic show. In 2000, Swiss presented a one-man show The Honest Liar as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. It was produced by Premiere Productions.
Writing
Jamy Ian Swiss is the author of the essay collections Shattering Illusions,Devious Standards and Preserving Mystery, all three of which have been reissued in a combined trilogy boxed set. He is also a co-author of the companion volume to the PBS documentary The Art of Magic, and the "Explaining Magic" chapter of Visual Explanations by Edward Tufte. Additionally, he has contributed to, or consulted on, the following books:
Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions by Stephen Macknick and Susana Martinez-Conde
Swiss wrote the forward to, and co-wrote and edited, the monumental two-volume book set entitled , which details the real secrets of seventy-eight of famed magician Johnny Thompson's most celebrated magic routines. He writes columns for Skeptic magazine and the quarterly magic journal Antimony. He has written for Genii, the Conjurors’ Magazine since 1994. Swiss writes a regular column of magic book reviews entitled and writes a long-running series called , which pays tribute to important figures in the history of magic.
Teaching Magic and Consulting
He was a comedy writer and chief magic consultant for Penn & Teller on their television program, Sin City Spectacular, and he was associate producer for 24 episodes. He also served as head writer and associate director for The Virtual Magician starring Marco Tempest, which aired in 45 countries. He has lectured to magicians in 13 countries. He also created and produces Card Clinic, an "intensive seminar on sleight-of-hand magic with playing cards." As a mentor, instructor, and consultant to magicians, he has been known as "the Simon Cowell of magic."
Scientific Skepticism
A longtime Scientific skeptic, Jamy Ian Swiss has spoken widely to skeptic groups and conferences around the United States. He has been featured in on-stage events about skepticism and magic with Penn and Teller, Ray Hyman, and others. Swiss is a co-founder of the New York City Skeptics and the National Capital Area Skeptics and as a skeptic of the paranormal, he has been a longtime critic of "unethical mentalists" and "psychic con artists" who use "supernatural deceit" for personal gain. He is an expert on psychic charlatans, and on the intersection of science, magic, and skepticism.
Media Appearances
Print
Swiss has been featured numerous times in The New Yorker, and in Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and New York Press.
TV and radio
Swiss was featured on NPR discussing the art of teaching and preserving magic. He has created, produced and performed in the Discovery Channel documentary, Cracking the Con Games. He was featured in the TV showBrain Games "tricking a group of gamblers." He has also appeared in television programs including 48 Hours, the PBS series NOVA, and the PBS documentary The Art of Magic and The Today Show.
Movies and Documentaries
Swiss was the magic designer for the feature film The Fantasticks. He was the host in the documentary Merchants of Doubt, drawing a parallel between his 'honest' lying and the deceitful lying in politics and business.
