Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1: Experimentalizing Life

1. Representation on the Line

2. The Vibratory Organism

3. Visible Speech

Part 2: Experimentalizing Art

4. Algorithms of Pleasure

5. Liberating Verse

6. Sensory Fusion

7. Art for Life's Sake

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Robert Brain traces the origins of artistic modernism to specific technologies of perception developed in late-nineteenth-century laboratories. Brain argues that the thriving fin-de-siècle field of ?physiological aesthetics,? which sought physiological explanations for the capacity to appreciate beauty and art, changed the way poets, artists, and musicians worked and brought a dramatic transformation to the idea of art itself.

Robert Michael Brain is associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia.