Lot Essay
The two frames of film contained in the stereoscope are the scarce remnants of a film shot by Duchamp and Man Ray, presumably in 1925 (although both artists recall this to have occurred earlier). The idea was to shoot Duchamp's kinetic object Rotary Demisphere (Precision Optics) (Schwarz 409) of 1925, a rotating half-sphere painted with eccentric circles, with two cameras from two viewpoints through a red and green lense, in order to create a 3-D film projection. Unfortunately, the majority of the footage was destroyed in the developing process and only a few frames survived, which ultimately found a place inside this whimsically nostalgic multiple, published in a tiny edition in 1973.