Project Concept
Audio Estrangement	Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important. Victor Shklovsky "Art as Technique" The Russian formalist movement led by Victor Shklovsky was a form of criticism in literature and poetry. Members of this movement were influential to the beginnings of postmodernism, structuralism and linguistics in the 1960s. In his work "Art as Technique" Shklovsky laid down the main theory. In this essay, he defines the concept of estrangement as a main tool for deepening perception. Estrangement is achieved by alienating the object from its original context. When inserted into different environment then it becomes estranged. The object then becomes visible, or easily perceptible. By this, the spectator sees the object out of its everyday reality and by being aware of it he becomes more aware of its own environment. The critical discourse of estrangement is the one of habituated perception. In our everyday reality, our perception becomes automatized or habituated. This creates a state of indifference, or we never ask our selves about the real nature of some objects (as well subject matter). For this reason, art and literature, in the case of Russian formalists, becomes responsible for activating perception in order to emancipate senses. Very interesting example of their concept of reality can be found in Tolstoy's story "Kholstomer" where he greatly uses technique of "defamiliarization". In this story he exposes a horse's viewpoint of the institution of private property. Although this concept was mostly applied in literature and poetry it gives a number of possibilities for its application in the art. In "Sounds of Qualia" the object of estrangement is sound. Extracted from its original context (reality) and applied in a new way with an aim to deepen the perception about one's presence in the environment. I will experiment with sounds one is producing while walking (or the sounds of steps). Walking is interesting because it represent an automatized motor function and an act of traveling by foot. In archaic terms it used to describe a way in which someone lives or behaves. (Oxford American Dictionaries) It has a rhythm, speed and if one listens carefully the way someone walks he/she can even determine his/her character.
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