Sublime resonance. The auditory experience between art and media

Abstract

Resonance is relevant to an aesthetic theory of media. In fact, since aesthetics has begun being committed to the understanding of the nature and functioning of media, also outside their usage in art, the medium has been recognized as a tool by the means of which sensations can resonate to our sense organs. This is especially the case for Rudolf Arnheim’s theory of radio. Furthermore, we can say that, through media, it is our very experience that acquires a peculiar quality of resonance. In Arnheim’s account, the aesthetic experience bound to the listening of radio dramas can be shaped and driven according to new aesthetic values, because of representing the imaginary space of action only by means of the resonances artfully created by skilled radio drama writers and directors, and eventually perceived by the audience. This broader sense of resonance attributed to media can be found also in Lyotard’s reconsideration of the Kantian sublime as a way for theorizing modern art. In the latter case, art is the medium of a transcendence that would not be presentable outside this device of resonance.