The Extended Importance of the Social Creation of Value in Evolutionary Processes

This is a single-authored paper delivered at the biennial European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) in Riva del Garda, Italy 28 – 29 August 2006 and published in proceedings. The paper proposed that computational modelling be employed in order to test two processes that might hypothetically distinguish particular dimensions of human creativity. The first process is identified by the researcher as one in which the pursuit of novelty in artistic invention – especially music – tends to words the production of increasingly perceptually complex artefacts. The second process moves from a perspective orientated towards the individual artist and the individual art work’s reception to a more collective one: namely, whether cultural behaviour that tends towards novelty might find itself being reinforced by clustering of similar activities. This latter process would be one that explains why the process of “making special” – that may distinguish art in an anthropological sense – is one that forms particularly strong community bonds. These bonds between novelty seekers – which in the case of the researchers paper can be understood as musicians or artists – may reciprocally reinforce to support yet more novelty seeking. The relation of art and the new is not itself innovative. Boris Groys’ “On The New” provides a scoping of that territory. What is innovative is the proposal to use of computer simulation of individual and collective behaviour as a kind of artificial laboratory to determine the complex tendencies that animate these processes of novelty seeking and, by extension, artistic production. Computationally simulating behaviour that parallels both novelty-seeking as an individual practice (the artist) and the emergence of clusters of novelty seekers (the artistic styles) may, according to the researcher, provide us with new insights the historical evolution of creativity

Risk, creative spaces and creative identity in creative technologies research (or why it's okay for academic creative technology outputs to look scrappy and be buggy)

In this chapter, I will draw on over ten years of practice-based research that applies emerging technologies, algorithms and code as a creative medium in the areas of music performance, music composition and media art installation. I will consider the competing demands of making things work technically and artistically, and the nature of collaborative work. I will consider my own recent research and that of a current PhD student as case studies in how this works in an academic context. Two concepts will structure the discussion. The first considers the question of time commitment and risk when undertaking specific activities, in relation to expected outcomes. I will look at how a practitioner handles the risk of an idea not working out at all and the more pragmatic risk of unexpected barriers to success. The second considers how much effort goes into setting up a creative space, through prior technical work and design thinking. I will look at examples of building creative freedom into a tool

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

Clap-along: A negotiation strategy for creative musical interaction with computational systems

This paper describes Clap-along, an interactive system for theorising about creativity in improvised musical performance. It ex- plores the potential for negotiation between human and computer par- ticipants in a cyclical rhythmic duet. Negotiation is seen as one of a set of potential interactive strategies, but one that ensures the most equitable correspondence between human and machine. Through mutual negotia- tion (involving listening/feature extraction and adaptation) the two par- ticipants attempt to satisfy their own and each other’s target outcome, without knowing the other’s goal. Each iteration is evaluated by both participants and compared to their target. In this model of negotiation, we query the notion of ‘flow’ as an objective of creative human-computer collaboration. This investigation suggests the potential for sophisticated applications for real-time creative computational systems

A Framework for Dialogue-Based Human-AI Creative Collaboration

Human-AI co-creative collaboration has been proposed as a model that integrates the strengths of both humans and creative algorithms. Several frameworks have been developed to classify and guide the design of such systems. However, these models lack communication mechanisms that enable the emergence of a common ground between humans and machines through a mutual adaptation of understanding about goals and meanings, a crucial component in all collaborations. We argue that dialogue is a mechanism that serves this purpose and can be included in human-AI co-creative systems to that end. We propose a breakdown of dialogic creative interaction and use it to analyze co-creative dialogue with GPT-3

Player Responses to a Live Algorithm: Conceptualising computational creativity without recourse to human comparisons?

Abstract Live algorithms are computational systems made to perform in an improvised manner with human improvising musicians, typically using only live audio or MIDI streams as the medium of interaction. They are designed to establish meaningful musical interaction with their musical partners, without necessarily being conceived of as "virtual musicians". This paper investigates, with respect to a specific live algorithm designed by the author, how improvising musicians approach and discuss performing with that system. The study supports a working assumption that such systems constitute a distinct type of object from the traditional categories of instrument, composition and performer, which are capable of satisfying some of the expectations of an engaging improvisatory performance experience, despite being unambiguously distinct from a human musician. I investigate how the study participants' comments and actions support this view. Specifically: 1) participants interacting with the system had a stronger sense of the nature of the interaction than when they were passively observing the interaction; 2) participants couldn't tell what the "rules" of the interactive behaviour were, and didn't feel they could predict the behaviour, but reported this as being a positive, engaging aspect of the experience. Their actions implied that the improvisation had purpose and invited engagement; 3) participants strictly avoided discussing the system in terms of virtual musicianship, or of creating original output, and preferred to categorise the system as an instrument or a composition, despite describing the interaction of the system as musically engaging; 4) participants felt the long-term structure was lacking. Such results, it is argued, lend weight to the idea that as CC applications in real creation scenarios grow, the creative contribution of computer systems becomes less grounded in comparison with human standards

Creative Experiments Using a System for Learning High-level Performance Structure in Ableton Live

(Abstract to follow

Examining the Perception of Liveness and Activity in Laptop Music: Listeners’ Inference about What the Performer is Doing from the Audio Alone

Audiences of live laptop music have been known to express dismay at the opacity of performer activity and question how “live” such performances actually are. Yet motionless laptop performers endure as a musical spectacle from clubs to concert halls, suggesting that for many this is a non-issue. Understanding these perceptions might help performers better achieve their intentions, inform interface design within the NIME field and help our understanding of what ‘liveness’ means in the context of new performance practices. To this end, a study of listeners’ perception of liveness and performer control in laptop performance was carried out, in which listeners were presented with several short audio-only excerpts of laptop performances and answered questions about their perception of the performance: what they thought was happening and its sense of liveness. The study suggests that listeners naturally associate liveness with perceived performer activity (such as improvisation and the audibility of gestures). Listeners were also shown to be able to recognise generative music processes

'The Ghosts of Roller Disco', a Choreographed, Interactive Performance for Robotic Roller Skates

The project investigates how interactions with complex (biologically inspired swarming) behaviors of multiple robots are understood by human participants within a performative and dramaturgical system. Nonanthropomorphic robots in the form of roller skates are used in innovative ways by creating social formations from their movements, for example a leader and followers in a conga line. Synchronized audio signals and speech-like sonic structures are used in innovative ways by influencing and engaging the participant's interactions with the robots. Localization data of the robots in space is mapped to control the surround sound and lighting within the space. This is used to enhance audience immersion and engagement within the interactive performance work