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

"[A] highly creative endeavour in the cultural history of science and aesthetics which provides a compelling account of the inspiration which various early practitioners of the modernist movement drew from the physiological laboratories of the nineteenth century. For historians working at the intersection between science and art it is essential reading, whilst historians of science, technology and medicine more medicine more generally can draw inspiration from this approach just as artists in the late nineteenth century looked outside the conventional boundaries of their practice to inform new directions of experimentation in the studio."

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart 1: Experimentalizing Life1. Representation on the Line2. The Vibratory Organism3. Visible SpeechPart 2: Experimentalizing Art4. Algorithms of Pleasure5. Liberating Verse6. Sensory Fusion7. Art for Life’s SakeConclusionNotes BibliographyIndex