Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Uncreative brute force searches and uniformly random searches may well succeed
for simple problems, that is, for small search spaces. For complex problems, search
spaces tend to be astronomically large and more creative approaches will be needed.
Stochastic searches for example, apply various heuristics for focusing the search in
productive regions.
The most important point to note is that on our account creativity is thoroughly
relative: it is relative to the pre-existing frameworks being used to produce some
kind of object and it is relative to the new framework being proposed. The creativity
of objects is strictly derivative from that of the frameworks producing them and, in
particular, the ratio of probabilities with which they might produce them. That is
why some entirely mundane object, say a urinal, may become a creative object. Of
course, the urinal (even Duchamp's) of itself is uncreative, because its manufactur-
ing process is uncreative, but its use by Duchamp in producing an art installation
that challenges expectations may well be creative. We must be conscious here of
the framework, in this case art, into which the artefact was introduced in order to
understand how it might be creative.
13.3.1 Methods for Discovering Novel Representations
As frameworks (stochastic procedures) may be represented, their representations
may themselves be generated by other stochastic procedures, or meta-frameworks.
So, we can talk of frameworks also as objects, and they are more or less creative
according to the probability with which their meta-frameworks produce them. By
recursion, then, we can consider the creativity of meta-frameworks and meta-meta-
frameworks without any fixed theoretical bound, even while practically bounded by
the complexity of the processes actually involved.
The meta-framework that finds that novel framework necessary for creativity
may itself be uncreative; it may even be a brute force search, uniformly random
or genetic drift. The manner in which the framework is discovered does not bear on
the creative activity that occurs at the level of the framework and the patterns it may
be used to generate. However we can separately or jointly consider the creativity of
all of these searches by defining a
creative order
.
A novel framework that generates a novel set of patterns in accordance with
our definition of creativity is of the first
creative order
. A novel framework
for generating novel frameworks for generating novel patterns in accordance
with the definition of creativity is of the second creative order. We can extend
this arbitrarily to talk of
nth-order
creativity.
