Computational Social Creativity

This article reviews the development of computational models of creativity where social interactions are central. We refer to this area as computational social creativity. Its context is described, including the broader study of creativity, the computational modeling of other social phenomena, and computational models of individual creativity. Computational modeling has been applied to a number of areas of social creativity and has the potential to contribute to our understanding of creativity. A number of requirements for computational models of social creativity are common in artificial life and computational social science simulations. Three key themes are identified: (1) computational social creativity research has a critical role to play in understanding creativity as a social phenomenon and advancing computational creativity by making clear epistemological contributions in ways that would be challenging for other approaches; (2) the methodologies developed in artificial life and computational social science carry over directly to computational social creativity; and (3) the combination of computational social creativity with individual models of creativity presents significant opportunities and poses interesting challenges for the development of integrated models of creativity that have yet to be realized

Artificial Creative Systems: Completing the Creative Cycle

Human creativity is personally, socially and culturally situated: creative individuals work within environments rich in personal experiences, social relationships and cultural knowledge. Computational models of creative processes typically neglect some or all of these aspects of human creativity. How can we hope to capture this richness in computational models of creativity? This paper introduces recent work at the Design Lab where we are attempting to develop a model of artificial creative systems that can combine important aspects at personal, social and cultural levels

Interpretation-driven mapping: A framework for conducting search and re-representation in parallel for computational analogy in design

This paper presents a framework for the interactions between the processes of mapping and rerepresentation within analogy making. Analogical reasoning systems for use in design tasks require representations that are open to being reinterpreted. The framework, interpretation-driven mapping, casts the process of constructing an analogical relationship as requiring iterative, parallel interactions between mapping and interpreting. This paper argues that this interpretation-driven approach focuses research on a fundamental problem in analogy making: how do the representations that make new mappings possible emerge during the mapping process? The framework is useful for both describing existing analogy-making models and designing future ones. The paper presents a computational model informed by the framework Idiom, which learns ways to reinterpret the representations of objects as it maps between them. The results of an implementation in the domain of visual analogy are presented to demonstrate its feasibility. Analogies constructed by the system are presented as examples. The interpretation-driven mapping framework is then used to compare representational change in Idiom to that in three previously published systems

Investigating Nonlinear Shoreline Multiperiod Change from Orthophoto Map Information by Using a Neural Network Model

The effects of extreme weather and overdevelopment may cause some coastal areas to exhibit erosion problems, which in turn may contribute to creating disasters of varying scale, particularly in regions comprising islands. This study used aerial survey information from three periods (1990, 2001, and 2010) and used graphical software to establish the spatial data of six beaches surrounding the island of Taiwan. An overlaying technique was then implemented to compare the sandy area of each beach in the aforementioned study periods. In addition, an artificial neural network model was developed based on available digitised coordinates for predicting coastline variation for 2015 and 2020. An onsite investigation was performed using a global positioning system for comparing the beaches. The results revealed that two beaches from this study may have experienced significant changes in total sandy areas under a statistical 95% confidence interval. The proposed method and the result of this study may provide a valuable reference in follow-up research and applications

Semi-automated level design via auto-playtesting for handheld casual game creation

We provide a proof of principle that novel and engaging mobile casual games with new aesthetics, game mechanics and player interactions can be designed and tested directly on the device for which they are intended. We describe the Gamika iOS application which includes generative art assets; a design interface enabling the making of physics-based casual games containing multiple levels with aspects ranging from Frogger-like to Asteroids-like and beyond; a configurable automated playtester which can give feedback on the playability of levels; and an automated fine-tuning engine which searches for level parameterisations that enable the game to pass a battery of tests, as evaluated by the auto-playtester. Each aspect of the implementation represents a baseline with much room for improvement, and we present some experimental results and describe how these will guide the future directions for Gamika

Towards a computational reading of emergence in experimental game design

In any prolonged creative act, there may be moments when an interesting and/or surprising aspect of the artefact being created, or a related idea, emerges without prior knowledge of the creator. Such emergent properties can be capitalised on to drive the creative process. With the Gamika iOS app, we have made it possible to create novel casual game levels in minutes and hours rather than the usual days and weeks. This has enabled us to undertake and analyse game design sessions with a think aloud methodology, focusing on moments of emergence and how they influenced the level design. This has in turn led us to an initial computational reading of emergence in game design, where we imagine how an automated game designer could recognise and take advantage of unexpected changes in aspects such as aesthetics, gameplay and playing strategies which arise during the creative process

Automated tweaking of levels for casual creation of mobile games

Casual creator software lowers the technical barriers to creative expression. Although casual creation of visual art, music, text and game levels is well established, few casual creators allow users to create entire games: despite many tools that aim to make the process easier, development of a game from start to finish still requires no small amount of technical ability. We are developing an iOS app called Gamika which seeks to change this, mainly through the use of AI and computational creativity techniques to remove some of the technical and creative burden from the user. In this paper we describe an initial step towards this: a Gamika component that takes a level designed by the user, and tweaks its parameters to improve its playability. The AI techniques used are straightforward: rule-based automated playtesting, random search, and decision trees learning. While there is room for improvement, as a proof of concept for this kind of mixed-initiative creation, the system already shows great promise

Innocent strategies as presheaves and interactive equivalences for CCS

Seeking a general framework for reasoning about and comparing programming languages, we derive a new view of Milner's CCS. We construct a category E of plays, and a subcategory V of views. We argue that presheaves on V adequately represent innocent strategies, in the sense of game semantics. We then equip innocent strategies with a simple notion of interaction. This results in an interpretation of CCS. Based on this, we propose a notion of interactive equivalence for innocent strategies, which is close in spirit to Beffara's interpretation of testing equivalences in concurrency theory. In this framework we prove that the analogues of fair and must testing equivalences coincide, while they differ in the standard setting.Comment: In Proceedings ICE 2011, arXiv:1108.014

Issues of authenticity in autonomously creative systems

As the value of computer generated artefacts increases, we need to question how creative software will fit into human culture, both as creative collaborators and autonomously creative entities. We hypothesise that, in certain contexts where creative software has increased or total autonomy, lack of authenticity will be a major limiting factor for creative systems in the arts and possibly elsewhere. After explaining and motivating this hypothesis, we study notions of authenticity in the human context and use this to raise issues of computational authenticity. We propose a number of ways to address these issues, including influencing public perception of creative software, practical approaches to software recording and using its life experiences, and employing alternative methodologies for building creative systems. We believe that identifying, exploring and addressing issues of authenticity will help to maximise the beneficial contributions that autonomously creative software can bring to society.</p

Issues of authenticity in autonomously creative systems

As the value of computer generated artefacts increases, we need to question how creative software will fit into human culture, both as creative collaborators and autonomously creative entities. We hypothesise that, in certain contexts where creative software has increased or total autonomy, lack of authenticity will be a major limiting factor for creative systems in the arts and possibly elsewhere. After explaining and motivating this hypothesis, we study notions of authenticity in the human context and use this to raise issues of computational authenticity. We propose a number of ways to address these issues, including influencing public perception of creative software, practical approaches to software recording and using its life experiences, and employing alternative methodologies for building creative systems. We believe that identifying, exploring and addressing issues of authenticity will help to maximise the beneficial contributions that autonomously creative software can bring to society.</p