Sublime Experience: New Strategies for Measuring the Aesthetic Impact of the Sublime

In aesthetics’ history, sublime is a very controversial category. It can be defined as a feeling consisting contemporarily of pleasure and displeasure. In theatre, the sublime translates in a special connection between the spectators and the performance. The research on sublime still does not agree on its nature and effects and empirical aesthetic has not been fully developed yet. In this paper the authors describe an investigation methodology, based on four main topics. Firstly, it is important to give a new definition of aesthetic category. Secondly, normative ratings of the sublime are needed and, to get them, one has to design an affective theatrical stimuli system. Thirdly, through experimental analysis, it is possible to collect patterns of activation reflecting the sublime. Fourthly, applying a software agent based on an Artificial Immune System with a Fuzzy Logic engine, it is possible to get a model to identify the sublime emotion.