Digital Pathway Final Essay: Denis Dutton talks about an evolutionary theory of beauty. What exactly is that?

How does it relate to digital media?

An evolutionary theory of beauty and it has the relevance of digital media.

2644 Teresa Han

Content
1. 2. Introduction ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 Body --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 An evolutionary theory of beauty ------------------------------------------------------ 3 The relation with digital media --------------------------------------------------------- 6 3. 4. Conclusion -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8 Reference --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9

Introduction
Denis Dutton, professor of psychology was also a co-founder and co-editor of the websites Arts & Letters Daily. The writing, "Art Instinct," explains to us the evolution of beauty, the formation of the concept of beauty and what effects were produced by beauty. Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital (as opposed to analog) form. It can refer to the technical aspect of storage and transmission (e.g. hard disk drives or computer networking) of information or to the "end product", such as digital video, augmented reality or digital art.

Denis Dutton talks about an evolutionary theory of beauty. What exactly is that? In my opinion, it is an awareness of the feeling with peoples psychological for now. Why some things that people think they are beautiful and some things that people very dislike them. Why people have this mentality and the different of cognition? Because the psychological sense of beauty, it is not just the current one with subjective experience of people. It is rooted deeply with the core in human nature and the evolutionary origins. In other words, the feeling of beauty with people of the world is starting from prehistoric; it is start with the beginning of human creature. It is a cognition which has been evolving along with the evolution of human. It is an idea and feeling that our ancestors were changing through evolution constantly over many years to pass on future generations. It is an experience, aesthetic experience.

Body An evolutionary theory of beauty

Denis Dutton believes beauty is a factor in the evolution of the system; beauty is an adaptive effect. It is the necessary structure in the evolution system. To explain these conclusions that Denis Dutton put forward a Darwins theory of aesthetics. To explain how the aesthetic experience is engraved into our hearts from ancient times to modern times. He used the human evolutionary psychology to explain the type of feeling with our aesthetic and emotional preferences; in fact, they are achieved through the evolution of human psychology, but also depend on the psychological evolution of human history.

Beauty with the psychological evolution of human history relies on two main mechanisms. One is natural selection, another is sexual selection. Natural selection, as we know, some of our natural attributes determine some things we like and dislike. As Denis Dutton suggested, we would nausea, fear, as we hate carrion smell, fear of snake attacks; we love sweets, protein, as we prefer ripe fruit, chocolate and roasted beef ribs. And another mechanism of sexual selection, according to Denis Duttons theory, likes the peacocks beautiful tail. In female peacocks eyes, the tail of male peacock is determined the criteria of a spouse they choose. So we can say that beauty can make us to maintain interest, fascinate charm and support us to make the best choice for survival and reproduction in the evolutionary history. Therefore, beauty is an invisible hand, you can not to eat beauty, but the mechanism for the evolution of beauty can make the object has a magnetic and charismatic feeling, so the feeling can let us to put more focus on it/she/he. This mechanism is also used and applies to digital media for todays world which I will talk later.

At the same time, Denis Dutton used two examples to explain this phenomenon. First, he described a painting about the landscape including its style, content and the way of framing. This particular form of art is loved by people widely. You can see it in
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wherever possible. Calendars, postcards, the design of golf courses and parks can be seen with this art. Even Eskimos who have never seen this landscape, they also like this painting. A pleistocene savanna is the characteristic of this landscape.

So, this seemingly simple like just people simple like it? We all know that modern people have a variety of beautiful necklaces, sculptures and decorative objects, these existed 100,000 years ago and the cave paintings at least 30,000 years ago. Denis Dutton gave us another example of the Acheulian hand ax which has the shape of leaves. They are stone knives. These hand-axes have been discovered in France, Asia and Africa. Many of them were unearthed, almost all over the place where Homo erectus lived. The Acheulian hand ax is an accurate and practical tool which is marked the evolutionary progress of human history. Because of the hand ax is a symbol of personal qualities, management, planning ability, strict fine motor control and getting unusual materials. So axe is a status symbol, but also a sign of the times, it has been inherited.
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For now, many beautiful things conform to this type of the law. The symbols of these things are the go with the flow, but also accord with todays fashion trends. Because our ancestors had no language at that time and they could not be like modern human beings who have so many languages, books, music, paintings and dances to express emotion. Our ancestors handed down to us the original features have not changed. It is the pursuit of skilled talent. We see the beauty in art works or many beautiful things. This is rooted in our hearts and minds. We inherited wisdom and emotional needs for time-tasted techniques from our distant ancestors. Therefore, our appreciation of beauty is a gift from our ancient ancestors. It is deep in our minds. It will be with us and our descendants for as long as the human race exists. Thus, we can get the evolution of beauty is actually, the structure of natural selection and sexual selection. Expressing them proficiently in a long time is a promotion with beauty evolution.

The relation with digital media

So how does it relate to digital media? As I said earlier, these two mechanisms for the evolution of beauty can make the object has a magnetic and charismatic feeling.

It is easy to see, digital media is a science; of course it is an art too. The relation with art and science is inextricably linked in todays information society, so there will be a new concept called digital media arts. Science needs to use all art methods to prove and promote their own technology; it relies on the boundless artistic imagination to innovation. The traditional art needs to use science technology to shape the image and create newer, stranger, more different artistic effect. However, the premise is these must be approved from the world, especially the focus audiences of the product.

Now the two mechanisms for the evolution of beauty are necessary - natural selection and sexual selection. If we use a few words to summarize briefly the meaning behind these two mechanisms with digital media are expertise, pleasure, style, criticism, imitation, special focus and imagination.

Every development of digital media is promoted by innovation. Continue to bring freshness to the user. Continue to bring surprise to them, not only creative but also technical. Digital media industries need to innovate more than other industries, especially users in innovation. This is natural selection because they need to know requirements from audiences they focus, including what audiences they like. Manufacturers want to make their products are attracted and audiences see beauty from the products. They must conform to the trend enjoyment form the public.

Internet media and innovative digital media have entered the era of personalized, differentiated products and requirements have become fundamental of competition. Use own expertise with the audiences preferences to choose the style. Digital media
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provide effective and practical products, services and applications to audiences with their experience and the public trend of aesthetic.

In the user experience, vision, emotions, thinking and action, these four elements form an important experience in digital media. Audiences can make their views and questions for the product. Keeping communication between digital platform and users, communication between enterprise customers and end-users, communication between users is very important. From this information, manufacturers can obtain a lot of information and data because the aesthetic vision of audiences is to represent the trend of popular in todays world which is more conducive to their creativity, development and retain old customers.

I can be said that the change of creation and development for digital media is based on the change and the development of peoples aesthetic preferences and tendencies. Taking the ordinary, 2D hand-drawn animation is the mainstream in the animation industry at the once, but now they are occupied by 3D animation. One of the reasons is because of the progress in science and technology. Another reason is that visual effects and beauty from 3D animation, 2D can never be achieved. Thus, audiences abandoned gradually of 2D animation and instead focus on 3D animation with the aesthetic aspects. And now, a lot of 2D animation in order to attract the attention of audiences, they are also putting in some 3D animation effects to enhance the visual effect.

Just like some of the world audition, audiences will always tend to choose those tall and shapely beautiful girls, because they look more charming and attractive. No one would go to like fat and asymmetrical girls. May be this aesthetic tendencies would have in ancient times, they like fat girl. Therefore, on the beauty choice is the same reason.
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Conclusion
Therefore, the evolution of beauty, in fact, it is the evolution of an aesthetic experience. It is a perception of beauty from human ancestors who gave us and rooted deeply in our minds. Under the influence of the two mechanisms with the aesthetic culture, peoples aesthetic will be changed in different times. The evolution of beauty also contributed to the development of digital media. Digital media shows the beauty is reflected aesthetic trends from people in todays society. While digital media is also change peoples aesthetic experience gradually and make it more mature and perfect.

Reference:

DENISDUTTON.COM http://denisdutton.com/

Wikipedia_Denis Dutton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Dutton

Wikipedia_Digital Media Wikipedia_Digital Art http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_media#Art

TALKS: Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty (New York: TED Collaborate, 2010) http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/denis_dutton_a_darwinian_theory_of_beauty.html

Denis Dutton, Aesthetics and Evolutionary Psychology, The Oxford Handbook for Aesthetics, Jerrold Levinson (ed.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). http://www.denisdutton.com/aesthetics_&_evolutionary_psychology.htm