Phasing Dancing Stand Sculptures by Cory Arcangel consists of a pair of “Dancing Stands.”
Dancing Stands are metallic commercial display-units whose shelves remain flat and parallel despite the steady flexing in-and-out of its hinges (it looks like the machines are swaying back-and-forth as in a dance).
The tempo of one of the Dancing Stands is modified to gradually phase its flexing-action further-and-further out of harmonious unison with its companion Dancing Stand.
This results in:
1. An “echoing” effect occurring between the first and second Dancing Stands.
2. A “reverse-harmony” in which the flexing-actions of each Dancing Stand become—for an instant—perfectly diametrically opposed.
3. A “reverse echoing” effect.
4. A re-linking-up-again in the original harmonious position from which one viewed the sculptures in the first place (before—again—falling out of unison and so on and so on and so on and so on).
This is “phasing,” a term Arcangel links to the avant-garde music of Steve Reich, in which the same phrase of music is played on different instruments in different tempos, resulting in a similar cycle of unison to echo to discord back to unison.
The effect is the gradual emergence of a new type of readymade—one having less to do with the objects in space and more to do with the phasing through time which they describe.