This thesis focuses on the emergence of sound art during the period of intense artistic innovation at the time of the transition of tsarists Russia to Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It contains a general overview of the most influential figures of the period and their ideas, experiments and artworks. The efforts of Italian futurists to liberate sounds and noise from the established art of music had a significant influence on Russian avantgarde artists. Their ideas inspired further artistic and scientific experiments of Russian artists, who in effect developed new concepts of sound based on synesthesia, newly discovered microtonality and conducted empirical research on sense organs. In this dissertation, I also examine newly founded institutions for audio-visual research that made new inventions, instruments and theories of sound possible. It is my hope that this work helps to map central ideas of this multidisciplinary cultural phenomenon that is marked by scientific enthusiasm towards technology and collectivist utopias.
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