Subterranean Homesick Blues

Marcel Duchamp - Rotoreliefs 

Duchamp recognized that by spinning designs composed as sets of eccentric but concentric circles, a viewer would see the resulting pattern as a three dimensional form even through one eye alone, without the supposedly necessary benefit of stereoscopy! By the 1930s, Duchamp had constructed from his experiments a wonderfully whimsical set of 12 spinning images—from a goldfish in a bowl, to the eclipsed sun seen through a tube, to a cocktail glass, to a light bulb—in order to emphasize his discovery of these three-dimensional effects. Ironically, as another example of harmful separation between truly unified aspects of art and science, art museums almost invariably exhibit these discs as framed, static objects on a wall—whereas they have no meaning, either artistic or scientific, unless they spin.

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I just love Duchamp.

(via wnycradiolab)