Architecture and the Sublime

“Beyond Their Actual Limits”: Immersion, Interactivity, and the Virtual Sublime in Burke and Video Games

“…Innovative techniques and technologies involved in these architectural and visual art forms highlight elements of the technological sublime, since the feeling of awe they invoke is at least partially directed toward human crafts (Etlin, 2012, p. 250). Nevertheless, this should not be seen as a case of technological achievements replacing an “exhausted” nature as “new sources of popular wonder and amazement” (Nye, 1996, p. 8).…”

“…Emphasizing the centrality of the psychophysical responses of the Burkean sublime (p. 233), as opposed to the actual conditions of the external stimulus, Etlin (2012) notes that the sublime architecture depends solely on the "experiential topography" as felt by the spectator (p. 234). Taking diverse examples ranging from the Roman Pantheon to 18th-century projects, Etlin examines various architectural techniques utilized to evoke a sense of the sublime, including those discussed by Burke and many that predate him.…”

“…However, the distinction between three-dimensional and two-dimensional art forms is not always clear when it comes to the techniques of the sublime. Pictorial representation often plays an important role in achieving or enhancing the architectural sublime (Etlin, 2012). The composition of the lost dome of Domus Aurea is arranged in such a way that it enhances the illusion that the canopy is hovering without any support and the vertiginous feeling of looking upward; the architectural structure and the painting of the gods in the Hall of Giants functioned as an inseparable whole in creating the impression that the gods, as well as the structure itself, was about to fall upon the visitor.…”

“…The Romantic conception of the sublime not only prioritized immersive and unmediated engagement with natural environments (Wilson, 2017) but also gave birth to modern tourism (Bell & Lyall, 2002). New visual and architectural techniques were developed to create a virtual sense of infinity through the limited space of paintings and structures (Etlin, 2012), which was later augmented by the new technology of the panorama (Ibata, 2018). Meanwhile, the original concept of the sublime as developed in antiquity was artificial at its core, primarily associated with rhetoric, before it became increasingly aligned with nature in the 17th and 18th centuries (Fedorova, 2017).…”

“…Ryan (2001) views Burke’s “physiological version of the sublime” (p. 266) that prioritizes bodily responses to external sensations and highlights the limits of “our mental and reflective capability” before an “overpowering force” (p. 277) as antithetical to Kant’s celebration of the autonomy of the rational subject. Etlin (2012) also points to Burke’s conceptualization of the sublime as a “psychophysical experience” generated not by imagining the unseen but by the embodied perception and sensation, although he critiques Burke’s theorization of the process as “rudimentary” (p. 233).…”