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plot wrinkles. If the element recombinations are trivial, then a piece is perceived as
predictable and clichéd. Emergent creative works break conventional, stylistic rules
and may violate basic expectations related to the nature of the aesthetic experience
itself. One thinks of the Dadaists and the world's reception of Duchamp's urinal as
a found-art object.
Usually, the more creatively emergent a production, the fewer the number of peo-
ple who will immediately understand it, because understanding a new art form or
approach requires constructing new conceptual observables and interpretive frames
in order to follow radical shifts of meaning. There is stress associated with the un-
certainties of orientation and interpretation. For high degrees of novelty, the “shock
of the new” causes high degrees of arousal that are in turn are experienced as un-
pleasant.
The relation between arousal, pleasure, and aesthetics was studied by 19th cen-
tury psychologists (Machotka
1980
). The bell-shaped, Wundt curve plots empirical
psychological data related to the relation between arousal (novelty) and experienced
pleasure. Low novelty produces boredom, low arousal, and low pleasure, while ex-
tremely high novelty produces high arousal that is experienced as unpleasant. Be-
tween these two extremes is an optimal level of novelty that engages to produce
moderate levels of arousal that are experienced positively. The degree to which a
new piece shocks (and its unpleasantness enrages) its audiences is an indication of
how many expectations have been violated. An individual's response tells us some-
thing about the novelty of the piece in relation to his or her own Wundt curve.
15.3 Creativity in Self-constructing Cybernetic Percept-Action
Systems
A second strategy for computational creativity involves expansions of the informa-
tional realms in the artificial devices themselves. In this section we consider ar-
tificial devices that create their own percept and action primitives, and argue that
self-construction guided by internal goals and evaluative faculties is necessary to
provide the structural autonomy and implicit dynamics needed to create new useful
semantic linkages.
15.3.1 A Taxonomy of Adaptive Devices
The most straightforward way of tackling the problem of how such devices might
be designed and built is to consider the different possible kinds of devices that can
be conceivably constructed using a set of basic functionalities. A few taxonomies
of possible mixed analog-digital adaptive and self-constructing cybernetic devices
have been proposed (Cariani
1989
;
1992
;
1998
, de Latil
1956
,Pask
1961
).
Here we present our own taxonomy of devices in which some functionalities are
fixed, while others are adaptively modified or constructed (Figs.
15.2
,
15.3
,
15.4
). It
