Lexicon

Abject
Accretion
Actant
Aeration
Aerobic
Algae-boosted
Animal
Anthropomorphism
Anti-Continuous Construction
Apocalypse
Aquaculture
Aquanaut
Ark
Artificial Intelligence
Autopoiesis
Assemblages
Asymmetry
Atrophy
Attraction
Autarchy
Automata
Automation
Autosymbiosis
Bambassador
Bathyscaphe
Bioconurbation
Biomedia
Bionics
Biosphere
Biotechnique
By-product
Capacity
Actant
Coisolation
Composting
Conservative Surgery
Consumer Envelope
Consumption
Continuous Construction
Conurbation
Correalism
Cultural_Memory
Cybernetics
Cybertecture
Cyborg
Dispositif
Diving Saucer
Dross
Earthship
Ecocatastrophe
Effluvium
Egosphere
End-use
Entanglement
Eutopia
Feedback
Foam
Folk
Gadget
Garbage House
Green Cyborg
Heuristic
Hoard
Holism
Homogenization of Desire
Hostile
Human Affect
Hybridized Folk
Hydroponic
Hyper-Materialism
Information Economy
Inner Space
Interama
Intra-Uterine
Maque
Megalopolis
Min-use
Mobility
Monorail
Multi-Hinge
Non-Design
Oceanaut
Oppositional Consciousness
Organic
Ouroboros
Panarchy
Parasite
Perceived Continuation
Permanence
Place
Prototype
Post-Animal
Reclamation
RI: Data Farms
RI: Garbage and Animals
RI:Shipbreaking
RI: Toxic Sublime
Sampling
Scale
Sensing Structure
Simulacrum
Simulation
Soft Energy
Spaceship Earth
Submersible
Superwindow
Symbiosis
Synthetic Environment
Technocratic
Technological Heredity
Technological Sublime
Telechirics
The Sublime
Thermal Panel
Actant
Thing-Power
Thinking Machines
Tool
Toxic Withdrawal
Turbulence
UV-Transparent Film
Vibrant Matter
Waste
Work

TOXIC SUBLIME

Conversations centered on the topic of the sublime as an aesthetic concept, especially with regards to how it differs from beauty, have endured and evolved over the past three hundred years. Immanuel Kant declared, "Sublime is the name given to what is absolutely great." More specifically he theorized, "The sublime is to be found in an object even devoid of form, so far as it immediately involves, or else by its presence provokes, a representation of limitlessness, yet with a super-added thought of its totality."1 These sublime objects were usually associated with natural phenomena; however, during the early to mid 20th century these sublime feelings transferred from natural occurrences to human achievements and technological feats, an experience dubbed the technological sublime. In contrast to the natural sublime, which "concerns a failure of representation," the technological sublime "concerns an apparently successful representation of man's ability to construct an ability to construct an infinite and perfect world."2 However, many technological accomplishments had detrimental effects on the environment and did not always reflect this potential for a "perfect world." More recently, an environmental aesthetic used to describe contaminated landscapes is the toxic sublime, which Jennifer Peeples defines as "the tensions that arise from recognizing the toxicity of a place, object, or situation, while simultaneously appreciating its mystery, magnificence and ability to inspire awe."3 A toxic sublime image draws its viewer aesthetically in through its abstract beauty while simultaneously providing disgust and disillusionment with a society that would allow such a toxic landscape come to be.

The trajectory of the transformation of the sublime provides certain overlap with historical views of nature. In the 1930s, Frederick Kiesler theorized correalism, which consisted of three environments: the natural, the human, and the technological. Through his proposed "continuous construction," Kiesler sought for a building to reduce joints in order to prevent "the process of disruption through natural forces."4 While attempting to simulate nature's continuity, Kiesler was proposing a system that would further the divide between the natural and human environments through a technological one. This divide is also at hand at a smaller scale with regards to the natural sublime where nature is viewed as far superior to man (natural forces infiltrate built forms through joints), but also the technological sublime where nature can be dwarfed by man's technological feats (continuous construction can separate the natural environment from the human one). However, the toxic sublime provides a setting where the divides between these environments is not so clear, each infiltrating and overlapping into the others and withdrawn, never fully revealing themselves. The existence of such toxic places demonstrates the failure of continuous construction, the divide between nature and civilization. The toxic sublime illuminates the existence of a new "total environment," neither totally lauding nor completely condemning the conditions of such places. Yet these toxic sublime images call into question the extent in which humankind has damaged the environment and presses us to question how we should function morally in the future with knowledge of the existence of these places.

Citations
Kant, Immanuel. "Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime." 1764
Nye, David. "American Technological Sublime." 1994,Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Peeples, Jennifer. "Toxic Sublime: Imagining Contaminated Landscapes." 2011,Environmental Communications 5. pp.373-392
Kielser, Frederick. "On Correalism and Biotechnique: A Definition and Test of a New Approach to Building Design." 1939, Architectural Record 86. pp.60-75