a walk (defamiliarizing my routine)

“Time to take a silly walk for my silly mental health,” I’ve said to myself at least once a day since March 2020.

It’s hard to avoid the boredom of convention as we automate more of our lives. As Henri Bergson puts it, there’s “something mechanical encrusted on the living.” In an essay on literary criticism, Viktor Shklovsky argues that as perception becomes habit, it becomes automatic, and to live in a state of automatism is to live a life half-expressed. As we become used to our routines, we stop truly “seeing” the things we pass by every day.

I practiced “seeing” a mundane aspect of my life for the first time by going for a virtual walk and mapping my new perception of the sights I’ve gotten used to, through a technique Shklovsky calls “defamiliarization” – presenting a common thing in an unfamiliar way.

This is a mix of music, thoughts, and scenery, just like my usual daily walk.

Game credits:

Music by Vladim Vilain (Instagram: @neuroticmamacita) and Oriana Confente (Instagram: @urghleshmeck)

Bitsy by Adam Le Doux, a little game maker

Pixsy by ruin, a tool for turning images into Bitsy rooms

Borksy by ayolland, a tool for hacking Bitsy

Google Maps, for source images

Theoretical resources:

O’Gieblyn, Meghan. “Routine maintenance: Embracing habit in an automated world.” Harper’s Magazine, 8 December 2021. 

Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Literary Theory: An Anthology, edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, 2nd ed, Blackwell Pub, 2004. Originally published in 1917.