One hundred and one years ago (exactly, as I write this), on Easter Day 1916, Duchamp made “With Hidden Noise,” one of his “assisted readymades.” Before sandwiching a ball of twine between two brass plates, he gave it to his friend Walter Arensberg to place an unknown object inside of the ball and then to clamp it all together with the four long screws. The piece is meant to be shaken (it rattles, hence the name) but to this day no one knows what is inside.
The mystery of “With Hidden Noise” is central to The Readymade Thief, and in its spirit I wrote a kind of Easter egg hunt into the novel.
Stay tuned: more details to come…