Systematizing Creativity: A Computational View
Authors
Abstract
Creativity is a long-cherished and widely studied aspect of human behaviorthat allows us to reinvent the familiar and to imagine the new. Computational
Creativity (CC) is a recent but burgeoning area of creativity research that brings
together academics and practitioners from diverse disciplines, genres and modalities,
to explore the potential of our machines to be creative in their own right. As a
scientific endeavor, CC proposes that computational modeling can yield important
insights into the fundamental capabilities of both humans and machines. As an engineering
endeavor, CC claims that it is possible to construct autonomous systems
that produce novel and useful outputs that are deserving of the label “creative.” The
CC field seeks to establish a symbiotic relationship between these scientific and engineering
endeavors, wherein the artifacts that are produced also serve as empirical
tests of the adequacy of scientific theories of creativity.We argue that, if sufficiently
nurtured by volumes such as this, the products of CC research can have a significant
impact on many aspects of modern life, with real consequences for the worlds of
entertainment, culture, science, education, design, and art.