E Pluribus Unum - Computational Creativity Research: Towards Creative Machines - page 167

where the main character is trying to escape from pursuers in a helicopter. In this
case, the escape trajectory is shown in a sequence of dynamically inserted 'panels'
that move across the screen to the point where they can pick up the character's
movement. This blending of properties in Lee's film does much more than 're-
create' a visual effect analogous to comics as sometimes suggested in analyses of
this film. Lee's appropriation of framing and movement techniques within an already
dynamic medium appears instead to provide a resource that considerably heightens
continuity for narrative effect. Amore detailed discussion of the consequences of this
appropriation for interpretation and reception is given in Bateman and Veloso [ 4 ].
We are just beginning to be able to explore extensions of meaning-making poten-
tial of these kinds. Indeed, although there are now many examples in the literature
of such creative meaning growth in action, deep questions remain concerning how
precisely this may be modelled. In particular, following simpler operations of 'align-
ment' of structures across spaces (e.g., by graph matching [ 16 , 72 ]), it is by no
means clear how the results that are achieved can function as productively as they
evidently do. This relates also to Fauconnier's suggestion that it is actually what is
done with the result of blending, termed elaboration (or 'running the blend'), that
is the most significant stage of the entire blending process. Elaboration “consists in
cognitive work performed within the blend, according to its own emergent logic” [ 12 ,
p. 151]. This makes it evident that something more is required in the formalisation
than a straightforward recording or noting of a structural alignment: a new blended
theory should also be 'logically productive', with new and surprising entailments
which may well be quite specific to the blend. This is therefore another motivation
for the rather more formal and ontologically-driven approach to this kind of creative
meaning creation that we now present.
9.3 Blending Computationalised
There have now been several approaches moving towards effective computational
treatments of blending, metaphor and related constructs such as analogy (cf. e.g. [ 47 ,
48 , 60 , 66 , 71 , 72 ]). Here we follow the research direction of algebraic semiotics
established byGoguen. In this approach certain structural aspects of semiotic systems
are logically formalised in terms of algebraic theories, sign systems, and their map-
pings [ 21 ]. Sign systems are theories 'with extra structure' connected by a particular
class of mappings, which Goguen terms 'semiotic morphisms', which preserve that
extra structure to a greater or lesser degree. In Goguen and Harrell [ 23 ], algebraic
semiotics has been applied to user interface design and blending. Algebraic semi-
otics does not claim to provide a comprehensive formal theory of blending—indeed,
Goguen and Harrell admit that many aspects of blending, in particular concerning
the meaning of the involved notions, as well as the optimality principles for blending,
cannot be captured formally. However, the structural aspects can be formalised and
provide insights into the space of possible blends.