Through an interlocking series of texts and images, this work explores how extreme sensations such as wonder, misery, ecstasy and rage have been portrayed at different moments in Western culture. Moving across multiple fields of creative endeavour and intellectual inquiry - from classical artefacts to Chicano art, political protest to operatic performance, Rene Descartes's writings on the soul to the Internet's digitised flesh - it reveals how the passions have elicited, eluded and transformed the act of representation. In addition to contributions by visual artists Anne and Patrick Poirier and video artist Bill Viola, the study offers a provocative set of case studies by Horst Bredekamp, Page du Bois, Martha Feldman, Stefan Jonsson, Elizabeth Liebman, Carol Mavor, Teresa McKenna, Richard Meyer, David Roman, Debora Silverman and David Summers.