A.N.
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Authro Noté's Author's Note: Machine Optique A.N.::Noté,Authro::5/8::MachineOptique |
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Machine Optique is a kinetic machine made by Marcel Duchamp in 1920. To give a sense of our interest is the phrase printed on the rotating disc of this machine and the significance of what we have done here in this DEEP-O section, we have included below Rosalind E. Krauss’ description and interpretation of Duchamp’s piece as published in her Toward Postmodernism chapter of The Originality of the Avante-garde and Other Modernist Myths. Krauss’ description here is a helpful articulation of Duchamp’s intentions, thus marking the significant contrast between Duchamp’s actions and ours. Duchamp’s undermined signification which renders the phrase into formal, meaningless phonetics is the still, stable point around which DEEP-O’s assertion of meaning revolves like a rotating disk:
“The rest of the sentence from the Machine Optique performs – at least in terms of its capacity for meaning – another kind of indignity on the body of language. Overloaded with internal rhyme, the phrase ‘estimons les ecchymoses des Esquimaux aux mots exquis” (we esteem the bruises of the Eskimos with beautiful language) substitutes sheer musicality for the process of signification. The elisions and inversions of the es, ex, and mo sounds upset the balance of meaning through an outrageous formalism. The confusion in the shifter couples then with another kind of breakdown, as form begins to erode the certainty of content.”
—Authro Noté
“The rest of the sentence from the Machine Optique performs – at least in terms of its capacity for meaning – another kind of indignity on the body of language. Overloaded with internal rhyme, the phrase ‘estimons les ecchymoses des Esquimaux aux mots exquis” (we esteem the bruises of the Eskimos with beautiful language) substitutes sheer musicality for the process of signification. The elisions and inversions of the es, ex, and mo sounds upset the balance of meaning through an outrageous formalism. The confusion in the shifter couples then with another kind of breakdown, as form begins to erode the certainty of content.”
—Authro Noté