Sensory overload theory entered art jargon from Simmel via 1960s media theory.

Evidence

Although traceable to the German sociologist Georg Simmel’s seminal 1903 essay, “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” the psychiatric term “sensory overload” (a neologism for “over-stimulation”) began to turn up in scholarly journals in the early 1960s and then in the jargon of artists like Gerd Stern influenced by Marshall McLuhan and later Timothy Leary. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1943

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader soundscape/noise research — sensory overload is the psych antecedent to acoustic overload and urban overwhelm arguments.
• SEED: Angle: the migration of a psychiatric term from Simmel through McLuhan to Leary charts how 60s avant-garde artists legitimized their own frenzy.