The topic of this essay is talking about Denis Dutton’s evolutionary theory of beauty, what his theory is and how his evolutionary theory of beauty relates to digital media. In my other course, which is called Academy Culture, I also did a similar essay about Denis Dutton’s theory – prove relationship between human evolution and evolution of arts. I choose this topic because I want to discuss Denis Dutton theory with digital media.
Firstly, I want to introduce about Denis Dutton personal background and his books that I found on Internet. Denis Dutton was come from United State of America and he was an academic, libertarian media commentator and also he was a professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Before he came to New Zealand, He had taught at some Universities in the USA. Then After 2008, he became head of the philosophy and Humanities school. He was dead in 2010, in his life from 1944 to 2010, he have written and published lots of documents articles and books. In 2009, Denis Dutton published a book, which was called The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. Early 2010, he was invited to do a speech called Denis Dutton A Darwinian theory of beauty by TED. In his: TED speech, he briefly summarized the main points from his book The Art Instinct. Denis Dutton’ idea of beauty was based on Darwin’s theory of human evolution. Darwin’s theory is commonly agreed by people and treated as the main theory about how human beings evolved.
What is Denis Dutton’s evolutionary theory of beauty?
Denis Dutton stated ‘beauty’ is an ‘adaptive effect’ that people feel from arts and entertainment. Human beings started to feel the beauty ‘effect’ since millions years ago. In the Darwin’s evolution theory, there are two main mechanisms – natural selection and sexual selection. Natural selection could be considered evolution influenced by environment or situation, for example, people don’t have long tail unlike other quadruped animal, because human beings don’t need long tail to balance themselves. The sexual selection is totally different from natural selection; one of the sexual Selection examples that Dutton Denis gave in his book is the peacock’s tail. Peaco’s have very beautiful magnificent tails and they use their tails to attract peahens for mating. While peahens influence peacocks and select them. Therefore evolution is easier survival and reproduction.
By natural selection, human being want to survival in the earth and beat huger animals and eat them meat, we need tools. For human history, hands axes were tools for production, but 2.5 million years ago; hands axes had been treated as aesthetic objects. People used hand axes to present their creative abilities. Similar to the peacock’s tail, high creative abilities Hands Axe makers gained more opportunity to reproduce by attracting the opposite sex then less creative tool markers.
Denis Dutton said in his book, what beauty is, for the people around the world. Even they live in different parts of the Earth, the have same aesthetic taste. One of his most obviously examples is landscape; everyone on earth is interested in landscape. People print landscape photos on post cards, calendars or computer desktops. Tourists travel around the earth to search and enjoy different landscapes. This can be considered as human beings finding and searching for beauty similar visual experiences from different cultures for one purpose.
Cave paintings could be considered as the earliest human artworks, we have found lots of cave paintings around the world, from Asia to South Africa. Starting from thousands years ago, people learned how to record their lives, animals and events. Compared with artworks, we could find similar things from cave paintings. As the recording materials and ways changed, we still record stories, draw animals, humans and objects on paintings. We have also found that human’s artistic and aesthetic tastes have changed in thousands years.
For human history, human’s tools have improved from millions years ago. At the beginning of human history, human started to use stone as tools. Then people understood to shape the stone to be sharp, as we know sharp tools are easy for butchering animals. Thousands years later, people learned to use metal to make tools and they learned to use stone and metal to present beauty, luxury and worth, for example gold and diamond. After millions of years, people understood how to develop and design stones and metal and make them from nature resources to be kinds of products and artworks and sell shaped stone and metal in jewelry shop. Deep inside human’s mind, the culture tells us the shaped stones and metals are beautiful and luxurious and worth a lot.
What is Digital Media is?
As the second topic of this essay is talking about what and how evolutionary theory of beauty relates to digital media. I would like to introduce what digital media is that I found the definition from Internet. 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. [1]
From the definition that I found, basically, the digital media if modem way store, transport and transfer media as data form on electronic. Digital media is a very extensive and huge topic. Digital media includes Mobile Phone, Computers, Digital video, electronic books, game consoles, Internet, Televisions, Video games and Interactive media. Those digital media has become parts of very important elements of our lives.
The first question that we should think about why we are inventing and invented many digital media. Sample is very simple: We need tools. According to Darwin’s theory - natural selection, if we want to survival in the Earth, we should have tools to protect ourselves or make our live better, make our working more effectively. At the same time our mind is changing when the human evolving continues, more convenience tools and entertainment are required.
We use mobile phone or higher smart phone to contact our family, friends or clients. We watch Television for entertaining and we search Internet for the newest information and share news with people and so on.
Millions years ago, our ancestors tried to record their events and lives on the cave painting, then our ancestors drew pictures on stones or wood till they knew how to make paper. At the same time human’s aesthetic taste was changing when people saw more and more different painting, then people started to link painting. This is a briefly way explain human evolution and arts. Now human start to use electronic devices to replace old tools. Human could also use digital media to record and share arts.
Above paragraph, we talked about how the human evolution inflected digital media as the lives required. Now I talk about what do they relate. There are many ways arts can be showed on digital media.
Denis Dutton talked about the people in difference culture and comes from different parts of the earth are interested in landscape and he say difference culture people can understand similar things. We are watching foreign movies and hearing songs in different languages. For example, Hollywood movie production is very famous in the world, in the world, there are not only English-speaking countries like watching those films but also many non-English speaker audiences are interested in. For marketing required, we always see some Chinese elements in the Hollywood movies, such as KungFu Panda. Compared with westerns countries, Asian centuries people have huge different cultures and lives style. But many Japanese comics are very popular in westerns countries, such as, Pokemon. Movie, Television shows are not only digital media but also Arts. Acrossing countries and cultures, people still can understand similar elements.
Video games other examples related to the human evolution. People introduce video, as people lives require for entertaining. Video games companies target markets are not only their own countries but also around the World. Dynasty Warriors serials is a game made by Japanese and the stories of the game is based on Chinese histories and novel - Records of Three Kingdoms. In this game, character are wearing Chinese style suits and background is Chinese Three Kingdoms period building and landscape. Players are from around the world and playing the same game, even thought they don’t have same cultures and histories.
Digital Arts is sort of new arts on the electronic. Sometimes people create digital arts for advertising purpose. Sometimes people create digital arts, especially interactive arts is more creative purpose as artists jobs. People create arts as animation on digital media such as on big screen, mobile or computer, because electronic devices is closer media to human lives than paper nowadays. We can consider digital devices equal cave which one of the oldest media in millions years ago.
In conclusion, this essay has briefly introduced what about Denis Dutton’s evolutionary theory of beauty and what digital media is and also I have talked about what and how the evolutionary theory relates to digital media. We introduce digital media as our lives require and technology developing as human society evolving, people use digital media to transfers and represents to arts to other people even in difference cultures.
Reference
Denis Dutton, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Dutton#cite_note-4 18 September 2011.
A Darwinian theory of beauty, TED http://www.ted.com/talks/denis_dutton_a_darwinian_theory_of_beauty.html 18 September 2011.
Denis Dutton, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, Oxford University 2009.
Denis Dutton website, http://denisdutton.com/, 18 September 2011.
The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution http://theartinstinct.com/, 18 September 2011.
[1] Definition of Digital media http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_media
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangokushi
