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the material produced, explores and transforms possible options, produces plans
and constraints which guide furthers periods of engagement. These ideas originate
the Engagement-Reflection Computer-Model of narrative generation. The model is
implemented in a program called MEXICA; it produces plots of stories about the
Mexicas, the inhabitants, in centuries past, of what is now México City. (These peo-
ple are sometimes inaccurately called the Aztecs.) Its main purpose is the production
of novel, coherent and interesting plots that generate useful knowledge (see the def-
inition of all these terms later in this chapter). That is, a creative agent generates at
least two types of outputs: a final product, e.g. a plot, and novel and useful knowledge
that increases its expertise, in this case the capacity of the program for the generation
of narratives.
Thus, computerized creativity (c-creativity) occurs when, besides producing
interesting, coherent and novel outputs, and as a result of performing (a routine
that represents) a creative process, a computer agent generates knowledge that:
does not explicitly exist in its original knowledge-base
is significant for the produced output
is available for the generation of future outputs
([
4
,
5
])
The main purpose of this chapter is to offer a general description of our project
in narrative generation and to illustrate how the infrastructure created around the
storyteller can be used to advance the study of c-creativity. This document provides
a general description of: MEXICA, our plot generator; the Evaluator, an agent that
grades MEXICA's generated plots; and MEXICA-impro, a system where two com-
puter agents collaborate to produce as a team a narrative.
The rest of the document is organized as follows. Section two describes how
the Engagement-Reflection Computer-Model for plot generation was implemented
in MEXICA. Section three describes the model for plot evaluation. Section four
describes the model for collaborative plot generation. The chapter ends with some
conclusions about the project and some comments about the field of computational
creativity in general.
13.2 MEXICA: The Engagement-Refection Computer-Model
for Plot Generation
The Engagement-Reflection cycle forms the backbone of the computer model, which
has been implemented in a program called MEXICA (for details see Pérez y Pérez
[
6
], Pérez y Pérez and Sharples [
5
] and Pérez y Pérez [
7
]). This program is divided in
two main parts: the first transforms a database into appropriate knowledge structures
in memory. The second makes use of such structures to develop novel stories.
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