Stakeholder Groups in Computational Creativity Research and Practice - Computational Creativity Research: Towards Creative Machines - page 6

becomes (at least temporarily) a great work. When he states that a particular artist
is unusually creative, who are we to argue? Given that the sentence 'X is creative'
is often shorthand for: 'Most people agree that they perceive X to be creative', such
authorities can essentially bring into being the creativity of X, regardless of whether
X perceives him/herself as creative or not.
1.3 Communities of Creativity Stakeholders
In order to understand the different groups of creativity stakeholders, the relationships
between them, and the ways in which meaning is continually being created, nego-
tiated and re-created, we can look to sociology. In Latour's Actor Network Theory
[ 12 ], he describes such stakeholders and diverse social groups as actors in a network.
Meaning is created socially via actors who cluster into diverse stakeholder groups.
These groups are in constant flux, as relationships, actors and ideas within the groups
change and come into conflict with each other. Latour holds that understanding such
dynamics in the network is essential to understanding processes of innovation and
knowledge-creation in science and technology. The process by which a network is
formed and comes to be represented as a single entity is called translation , and is a
key concept in the Actor Network Theory. Translation consists of various phases: the
initial formation of a programme and identification of actors in a new network with
a novel, shared goal ( problematisation ); the strengthening of the network via formal
and informal means ( interessement ); ways of evolving the network and providing
structures for new members to join ( enrolment ); and acquiring the resources and
power to build an effective institution which can achieve its goal ( mobilisation ).
In the case of Computational Creativity, relevant creativity stakeholders include
researchers, the wider AI community, funding bodies, experts in the psychology of
human creativity, neuroscientists, artists, art critics, journalists, philosophers, educa-
tors, the public, and so on. Each group has accompanying visions, beliefs and goals,
in which they have, to a varying degree, invested (and which, to a varying degree,
define them as a group). We hold that understanding such different perspectives and
their interactions is essential if software is ever to be deemed creative by mainstream
consumers of cultural artefacts. In this section, we consider these stakeholder groups
and in particular use Latour's notion of translation to look at how Computational
Creativity researchers have evolved into a community. We also look at some of the
relationships between the groups, both in the context of Computational Creativity
and the wider scientific arena.
1.3.1 The Computational Creativity Stakeholders
Members of the Computational Creativity community are largely people with a
background in Artificial Intelligence or computer science and an interest in creativity.