Loss of Identity in the Techno-Culture Essay -- Clubbing Partying Tech

I began my inquiry into the "techno-sublime" by keying the term "techno-sublime" into Googe to see if the term had been coined before. Whilst there was no exact match, the first site that opened was http://www.sublime.net.au/chillout.html, 'The Chillout . clubbing is a planetary experience'. I had long been interested in the event of the techno-dance party, that total awesome experience where there is a collapse of individuality and a loss of individual boundaries as "I" become part of the collective techno-experience. It was uncanny to find myself at this site in search of the "techno-sublime" and yet it was precisely this exstasis or loss of identity in the face of the awesomeness of the techno-experience that was central to my understanding of the experience of the techno-sublime.[1] Ben Malbon's (1999) study, Clubbing: Dancing, Ecstacy and Vitality, has proved invaluable in providing support for my elaboration of the techno-sublime. Whilst Malbon's thesis is different from my own, the responses of some of his respondents as well as his own diary entries have become very important in supporting my thesis that there is a loss of identity or estasis within the particular experience of techno-culture that is clubbing. Thus in a diary entry, titled '4 a.m. - lost for words, lost in time and space, just lost.', Malbon writes: We all seemed to want the music to take us over; to become us in some way.. Clubbers were losing it all over the place ... people are just so close to each other; proximately and emotionally.. The intensity of this fusion of motions and emotions was almost overwhelming. (Malbon 1999:xii) This diary entry, in particular, speaks of an experience in which his sense of identity and rationality is subsum... ...nd vitality, London: Routledge. Newman, Barnett (1948) 'The Sublime is now' in Harrison, C. Wood, P. (ed) (1994) Art in theory 1900 - 1990: an anthology of changing ideas, Oxford, Blackwell: 572-574. Nye, D.E. (1994) American Technological Sublime, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press. Storr, A. (1992) Music and the Mind, London: Harper Collins. Notes [1]I had begun my inquiry into the techno-sublime by arguing that in creative practice there occurs a particular flux that I have termed "working hot". When one is working hot, I have argued, the performance produces a dynamical relation where the work of art performs rather than represents. In this space, or state, I argued there is exstasis, or a loss of identity. [2] My elaboration of the techno-sublime has been informed by Christine Battersby's and Barbara Freeman's theorization of the feminine sublime. Loss of Identity in the Techno-Culture Essay -- Clubbing Partying Tech I began my inquiry into the "techno-sublime" by keying the term "techno-sublime" into Googe to see if the term had been coined before. Whilst there was no exact match, the first site that opened was http://www.sublime.net.au/chillout.html, 'The Chillout . clubbing is a planetary experience'. I had long been interested in the event of the techno-dance party, that total awesome experience where there is a collapse of individuality and a loss of individual boundaries as "I" become part of the collective techno-experience. It was uncanny to find myself at this site in search of the "techno-sublime" and yet it was precisely this exstasis or loss of identity in the face of the awesomeness of the techno-experience that was central to my understanding of the experience of the techno-sublime.[1] Ben Malbon's (1999) study, Clubbing: Dancing, Ecstacy and Vitality, has proved invaluable in providing support for my elaboration of the techno-sublime. Whilst Malbon's thesis is different from my own, the responses of some of his respondents as well as his own diary entries have become very important in supporting my thesis that there is a loss of identity or estasis within the particular experience of techno-culture that is clubbing. Thus in a diary entry, titled '4 a.m. - lost for words, lost in time and space, just lost.', Malbon writes: We all seemed to want the music to take us over; to become us in some way.. Clubbers were losing it all over the place ... people are just so close to each other; proximately and emotionally.. The intensity of this fusion of motions and emotions was almost overwhelming. (Malbon 1999:xii) This diary entry, in particular, speaks of an experience in which his sense of identity and rationality is subsum... ...nd vitality, London: Routledge. Newman, Barnett (1948) 'The Sublime is now' in Harrison, C. Wood, P. (ed) (1994) Art in theory 1900 - 1990: an anthology of changing ideas, Oxford, Blackwell: 572-574. Nye, D.E. (1994) American Technological Sublime, Cambridge Mass: MIT Press. Storr, A. (1992) Music and the Mind, London: Harper Collins. Notes [1]I had begun my inquiry into the techno-sublime by arguing that in creative practice there occurs a particular flux that I have termed "working hot". When one is working hot, I have argued, the performance produces a dynamical relation where the work of art performs rather than represents. In this space, or state, I argued there is exstasis, or a loss of identity. [2] My elaboration of the techno-sublime has been informed by Christine Battersby's and Barbara Freeman's theorization of the feminine sublime.