Aesthetic dimension of technology: dynamo as technological Sublime at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries

Abstract

In the second half of the XIX century technology saturated urban space and transformed fac­tory production around the world. Reception of technologies in everyday life was connected with aesthetic comprehension. Besides, perception of new technologies was a complex emo­tional experience that fostered reflections on possibilities of human mind and of man-made power, on historical role of technology and its future development. This article is devoted to the aesthetic characteristics of interaction with technology as an affective aesthetic expe­rience of the technological sublime. As an example, the representation and reception of the dynamo in the public discourse at the turn XX century will be considered. The concept of the technological sublime develops the classical category of the sublime, which was inter­preted as an extreme degree of tension of the senses when meeting objects and phenomena that exceed the possibilities of human perception. In the XVIII century, the aesthetics of the sublime was discovered in nature, and in the XIX century new machines and technolo­gies began to claim the role of objects of the sublime aesthetic experience. Technological sublime can be regarded as a transgressive experience (collision with the limits of human perception and limits of possibilities) and as existential experience (human awareness of the finitude of being).