Technology and the Sublime

Azimuth 12 Technology and the Sublime

Azimuth 12/2018 | Technology and the Sublime

Edited by Giulia Rispoli, Christoph Rosol
ISBN: 9788893591102
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The issue explores the intricate passage from the natural sublime to the technological sublime as well as their coexistence, suggesting ways to interpret the multiple and diffused relations between humanity, nature, and technology. In this framework, the focus is not only on sublime experiences when they occur in the presence of grandiose, impressive technological objects. Rather, the issue seeks to unveil practices of exploring and mastering nature that, at the same time, could be the vehicle for sublime experiences. For example, the tremor of the Earth provoked by the launch of a rocket, or the sense of uncertainty and probability inspired by computers, with their power of turning the universe into collections of elements combinable ad infinitum, give rise to sublime emotions that blend together fear and attraction, concern and satisfaction, danger and magnificence.


Contents:

  • Preliminary Notes
  • Benjamin Steininger, Petromoderne Petromonströs
  • Donatella Germanese, ‘Una forza universale incomparabile’: petrolio e sublime nelle riviste aziendali degli anni ’50
  • Andrea Candela, Nuclear Energy and the Sublime: A Visual History from the Early Italian Anti-Nuclear Movement (1975-1979)
  • Anna Storm, Atomic Fish: Sublime and Non-Sublime Nuclear Nature Imaginaries 
  • Nina Wormbs, Sublime Satellite Imagery as Environing Technology
  • Ksenia Fedorova – Marc Barasch, Mission to Earth: Terrestrial Proprioception and the Cyber-Sublime 
  • Timothy J. Barkwill, Approaching the Sublime: Exploring the Aesthetic Ambitions of Expanded Cinema 
  • Flavio D’Abramo, An Appraisal of the Biological Sublime between Eugenics, Epigenetics and the Political Economy of Life Sciences
  • Pietro D. Omodeo – Lindsay Parkhowell, Towards Another Sublime: Away from the Aesthetics of Destruction
  • David E. Nye, What Comes After the Technological Sublime?