Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 2
Creative Ecosystems
Jon McCormack
Abstract
Traditional evolutionary approaches to computer creativity focus on op-
timisation, that is they define some criteria that allows the ranking of individuals in
a population in terms of their suitability for a particular task. The problem for cre-
ative applications is that creativity is rarely thought of as a single optimisation. For
example, could you come up with an algorithm for ranking music or painting? The
difficulty is that these broad categories are shifting and subjective: I might argue
that Mozart is more musically creative than Lady Gaga, but others may disagree.
Objective, fine-grained ranking of all possible music is impossible, even for hu-
mans. I will show how reconceptualising the exploration of a creative space using
an “ecosystemic” approach can lead to more open and potentially creative possibil-
ities. For explanatory purposes, I will use some successful examples that are simple
enough to explain succinctly, yet still exhibit the features necessary to demonstrate
the advantages of this approach.
2.1 Creative Systems
In this topic you will find a broad range of definitions of creativity. Dorin and Korb
(Chap. 13), for example, emphasise a system's propensity to generate novelty irre-
spective of its perceived value, similarly Schmidhuber (Chap. 12) views creativity
as a problem of learning information compression. Nake (Chap. 3) is more sceptical
about formal computer models of creativity, seeing the popular concept of creativity
today as “a US-American invention,” one that may be considered as a
means
for ac-
tivity, or as its
goal
. Pachet (Chap. 5) prefers to focus on “virtuosity”, emphasising
the thousands of hours that human artists must spend to master a discipline or instru-
ment. Each of these views place a different emphasis on which qualities, properties
or functions are important to understanding creativity precisely, and hence appreci-
ating its worth or relevance in any given domain.
If we take Boden's popular definition—that creativity involves the generation
of ideas or artefacts that are
new, surprising,
and
valuable
(Boden
2010
)—then an
