Jen Lewin The Pool Analysis

When looking at the argument made against digital and the nature world could be particularly perplexing. One reason why digital art loses some connecting force to the world created by the gods is its relative ease in achieving a near perfect emulation. Having practiced many years with various graphical programs, the ease of obtaining a replication of the natural world settings is clear. An example could easy be three dimensional computer generated portrait of a person. By controlling the program’s various lighting settings and applying different textures, filters, and distortions, a digital artist can produce an artwork that could fool the eyes of an average viewer to be a natural depiction of a subject. Critics of digital art are opposed to

Known for her large installations of lights and engineering, Lewin’s most famous piece of work is The Pool, an installation of illuminated platforms where “you can paint and splash light collaboratively” (Jen Lewin, The Pool). As people walk across around the installation, the platform would react by changing the color of the light it shines. As this interactive art piece has a primary focus on colors, it has great ties to Edmund Burke’s aesthetic concepts of the beauty of colors. Written in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Burke detailed several matters when judging the beauty of an object through the use of color (Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry, 120). He begins with the concept that colors must not be muddy or dull, but fair. Lewin’s The Pool piece fits this criterion well as the light adds a sense of cleanliness. The next two is that the colors are portrayed as a mild feeling or, if done to be vivid, is diversified. Lewin’s piece may be able to fit in both criteria. While the platforms are using strong and vivid colors, strengthen by the contrast of the light source, the illumination is fairly low and give off a soft sense of calm and relaxation. Lewin’s The Pool provides an interesting example of how concepts of aesthetic ideals could still be used in an entirely unforeseen method of

While the tools and types of canvas has changed many since the development of those initial ideas, I argue that aesthetics is the judgment of human characteristics in art. This would include what has inspired, motivated, or revealed to them. The resulting product, either a painting or a digital print, will show the audience the conscious or subconscious message the artist seeks to tell Some may argue that the human aspect of digital are is little to none, with the majority of the creation being done by the hands of a machine. To this I would have to disagree with. While tools such as software and programming made it seem like creating art to be an effortless process, it still requires human control to produce anything, requiring things such as thought and creativity during the work to create the piece. As Martin Heidegger claims in The Origin of the Work of Art, “the artist is the origin of the work” while “the work is the origin of the artist” (Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art, 345). This statement is something I agree with as it supports my stance. If the artist is the one to possess the imagination for the art piece, then it can be seen that the artist must be human as the ability to imagine is something unique to people. When applied to digital art, if the artist is human, then the work of art would have a human origin, rather than a