CLIP-CLOP: CLIP-Guided Collage and Photomontage

The unabated mystique of large-scale neural networks, such as the CLIP dual image-and-text encoder, popularized automatically generated art. Increasingly more sophisticated generators enhanced the artworks' realism and visual appearance, and creative prompt engineering enabled stylistic expression. Guided by an artist-in-the-loop ideal, we design a gradient-based generator to produce collages. It requires the human artist to curate libraries of image patches and to describe (with prompts) the whole image composition, with the option to manually adjust the patches' positions during generation, thereby allowing humans to reclaim some control of the process and achieve greater creative freedom. We explore the aesthetic potentials of high-resolution collages, and provide an open-source Google Colab as an artistic tool.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figures, published at the International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC) 2022 as Short Paper: Dem

Computational Creativity and the Climate Crisis

Thelatest IPCCreport states thatwemustactnowto avoidclimatecatastrophewithin the lifetimesof our children. Although typically involved inknowledge production,wehaveadutyasacademics toact. We proposetwopathwaysfortheCCcommunity: (1)lead byexamplebycuttingdownourcarbonfootprint;and (2)useourstrengthsincreativethinkingtocontribute towardsclimatesolutions,communicatethedevastating impact,andhelptoeffectaculturalshift

Computational Creativity and the Climate Crisis

Thelatest IPCCreport states thatwemustactnowto avoidclimatecatastrophewithin the lifetimesof our children. Although typically involved inknowledge production,wehaveadutyasacademics toact. We proposetwopathwaysfortheCCcommunity: (1)lead byexamplebycuttingdownourcarbonfootprint;and (2)useourstrengthsincreativethinkingtocontribute towardsclimatesolutions,communicatethedevastating impact,andhelptoeffectaculturalshift

Framing tension for game generation

Emotional progression in narratives is carefully structured by human authors to create unexpected and exciting situations, often culminating in a climactic moment. This paper explores how an autonomous computational designer can create frames of tension which guide the procedural creation of levels and their soundscapes in a digital horror game. Using narrative concepts, the autonomous designer can describe an intended experience that the automated level generator must adhere to. The level generator interprets this intent, bound by the possibilities and constraints of the game. The tension of the generated level guides the allocation of sounds in the level, using a crowdsourced model of tension.peer-reviewe

Boosting computational creativity with human interaction in mixed-initiative co-creation tasks

Research in computational creativity often focuses on autonomously creative systems, which incorporate creative processes and result in creative outcomes. However, the integration of artificially intelligent processes in human-computer interaction tools necessitates that we identify how computational creativity can be shaped and ultimately enhanced by human intervention. This paper attempts to connect mixed-initiative design with established theories of computational creativity, and adapt the latter to accommodate a human initiative impacting computationally creative processes and outcomes. Several case studies of mixed-initiative tools for design and play are used to corroborate the arguments in this paper.peer-reviewe

On the role of computers in creativity-support systems

We report here on our experiences with designing computer-based creativity-support systems over several years. In particular, we present the design of three different systems incorporating different mechanisms of creativity. One of them uses an idea proposed by Rodari to stimulate imagination of the children in writing a picture-based story. The second one is aimed to model creativity in legal reasoning, and the third one uses low-level perceptual similarities to stimulate creation of novel conceptual associations in unrelated pictures.We discuss lessons learnt from these approaches, and address their implications for the question of how far creativity can be tamed by algorithmic approaches

Vismantic : Meaning-making with Images

Jufo-ID 72909. (ICCC 2015).This paper presents Vismantic, a semi-automatic system generating proposals of visual composition (visual ideas) in order to express specific meanings. It implements a process of developing visual solutions from ‘what to say’ to ‘how to say’, which requires both conceptual and visual creativity. In particular, Vismantic extends previous work on using conceptual knowledge to find diverse visual representations of abstract concepts, with the capacity of combining two images in three ways, including juxtaposition, replacement and fusion. In an informal evaluation consisting of five communication tasks, Vismantic demonstrated the potential of producing a number of expressive and diverse ideas, among which many are surprising. Our analysis of the generated images confirms that visual meaning making is a subtle interaction between all elements in a picture, for which Vismantic demands more visual semantic knowledge, higher image analysis and synthesis skills, and the ability of interpreting composed images, in order to deliver more ideas that make sense.Peer reviewe

Artistic and Musical Applications of Internet Search Technologies: Prospects and a Case Study

This paper explores the idea of internet search as a technology to underpin artistic creation. Concepts of interactivity in art and music are explored, and then an overview of different types of internet-based art is presented. A number of different ways in which internet search have the potential to underpin artistic and musical activity are then discussed, with ideas such as the idea of a collective readymade and aesthetics of mass and unexpected connections are used to give this discussion a theoretical basis. Finally, a case study is given, in which the author discusses one of their own multimedia artworks that makes substantial use of internet search

The Lovelace Effect: Perceptions of Creativity in Machines

This article proposes the notion of the ‘Lovelace Effect’ as an analytical tool to identify situations in which the behaviour of computing systems is perceived by users as original and creative. It contrasts the Lovelace Effect with the more commonly known ‘Lovelace objection’, which claims that computers cannot originate or create anything, but only do what their programmers instruct them to do. By analysing the case study of AICAN – an AI art-generating system – we argue for the need for approaches in computational creativity to shift focus from what computers are able to do in ontological terms to the perceptions of human users who enter into interactions with them. The case study illuminates how the Lovelace effect can be facilitated through technical but also through representational means, such as the situations and cultural contexts in which users are invited to interact with the AI

Intelligenza artificiale e industrie culturali storia, tecnologie e potenzialità dell’ia nella produzione cinematografica

Negli ultimi anni stiamo assistendo, in svariati campi, a un sempre più vasto utilizzo di tecnologie che utilizzano quella che viene comunemente chiamata “intelligenza artificiale”. Anche il settore audiovisivo, da sempre recettore di novità e incline a evolversi continuamente, sta già vivendo quei processi che lo porteranno a essere rivoluzionato da questo tipo di tecnologie. In un periodo di frenetico progresso scientifico è difficile riuscire a fissare nel tempo e su carta lo stato attuale dello sviluppo tecnologico, dato che ciò che oggi viene considerato come novità domani potrebbe già essere stato superato. È necessario, quindi, uno strumento che riesca a catalogare, se non tutte, almeno le più importanti rivoluzionarie tecnologie d’intelligenza artificiale che hanno investito il mondo della produzione artistica e delle industrie culturali. Uno studio approfondito è dedicato, in particolare, all’industria cinematografica. Dopo una breve introduzione di carattere storico, vengono descritti i principali tipi di rete neurale artificiale e la loro evoluzione. Sono poi delineate e descritte le principali tecnologie d’IA applicate all’elaborazione, comprensione e generazione automatica o assistita d’immagine e testo. Ancora più nel dettaglio sono osservate alcune soluzioni tecnologiche che interessano le varie fasi del processo di produzione cinematografica, come la fase di scrittura e analisi della sceneggiatura, quella di editing e montaggio video, così come quelle riguardanti l’implementazione di effetti visivi e la composizione musicale. Il testo risulta essere, da un lato, una fotografia sul passato che ha interessato lo sviluppo delle tecnologie d’IA, dall’altro uno strumento che illustra il presente così da aiutarci, se non a predire, almeno a non trovarci completamente impreparati di fronte agli sviluppi futuri che interesseranno sia la produzione audiovisiva che, in senso più ampio, la nostra vita di tutti i giorni