Video Games and the Technological Sublime – Tate Papers | Tate

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This paper examines the notion of the contemporary technological sublime, and asks what sublime affect means in the context of contemporary digital technologies such as video games. It argues that the contemporary technological sublime finds expression in an affective combination of elevated emotion and banality – a combination in which the subject also encounters the limits of the self. The following discussion examines the notion of the contemporary technological sublime by reflecting on the video game as an aesthetic form. It does so not with the intention of categorising video games as art (or not), but in order to examine what sublime affect might mean in the context of contemporary digital technologies. It draws on philosopher Immanuel Kant’s classical formation of the sublime as laid out in the Critique of Judgement (1790), as well as later accounts of the technological sublime by historian David Nye, and the contemporary ‘post-human’ sublime by cultural theorist Jeremy Gilbert-

ISSN 1753-9854 Video Games and the Technological Sublime Eugénie Shinkle This paper examines the notion of the contemporary technological sublime, and asks what sublime affect means in the context of contemporary digital technologies such as video games. It argues that the contemporary technological sublime finds expression in an affective combination of elevated emotion and banality – a combination in which the subject also encounters the limits of the self. Twitter Facebook Email Aesthetics, the subject, and the technological sublime Gameplay: stuplimity or flow? Failure events and the loss

Video Games and the Technological Sublime – Tate Papers | Tate

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