Constrained creation of poetic forms during theme-driven exploration of a domain defined by an N-gram model

Most poetry-generation systems apply opportunistic approaches where algorithmic procedures are applied to explore the conceptual space defined by a given knowledge resource in search of solutions that might be aesthetically valuable. Aesthetical value is assumed to arise from compliance to a given poetic form – such as rhyme or metrical regularity – or from evidence of semantic relations between the words in the resulting poems that can be interpreted as rhetorical tropes – such as similes, analogies, or metaphors. This approach tends to fix a priori the aesthetic parameters of the results, and imposes no constraints on the message to be conveyed. The present paper describes an attempt to initiate a shift in this balance, introducing means for constraining the output to certain topics and allowing a looser mechanism for constraining form. This goal arose as a result of the need to produce poems for a themed collection commissioned to be included in a book. The solution adopted explores an approach to creativity where the goals are not solely aesthetic and where the results may be surprising in their poetic form. An existing computer poet, originally developed to produce poems in a givenform but with no specific constraints on their content, is put to the task of producing a set of poems with explicit restrictions on content, and allowing for an exploration of poetic form. Alternative generation methods are devised to overcome the difficulties, and the various insights arising from these new methods and the impact they have on the set of resulting poems are discussed in terms of their potential contribution to better poetry-generation systems

Un modelo para la evaluación de la narrativa basada en partidas de ajedrez

El éxito en la generación automática de historias requiere, entre otros aspectos, la decisión sobre la inclusión de tramas que provoquen emociones en el lector, donde la tensión narrativa representa un recurso fundamental para transmitirlas. Actualmente, sin embargo, las propuestas que modelan el cálculo de dicha tensión se circunscriben localmente a algunos generadores. Un modelo más general de medición de la tensión narrativa ayudaría a nuevos sistemas a adaptar el relato a la tensión requerida, asegurando una evolución óptima de la trama. En el ámbito descrito, este documento presenta una propuesta de predicción de la tensión y su aplicación en la evaluación de narrativas basadas en partidas de ajedrez

Integración de teoría y práctica / gestión y desarrollo en la docencia de la ingeniería del software

Se presenta una propuesta de integración y coordinación entre las partes teórica y práctica de la ingeniería del software destinada a: facilitar la disponibilidad de especificaciones de partida, paliar las restricciones temporales para el desarrollo de proyectos a gran escala, proporcionar a los alumnos una experiencia real de trabajo en equipo y de uso de la documentación para la comunicación dentro de un equipo

Quantitative Characteristics of Human-Written Short Stories as a Metric for Automated Storytelling

Evaluating the extent to which computer-produced stories are structured like human-invented narratives can be an important component of the quality of a story plot. In this paper, we report on an empirical experiment in which human subjects have invented short plots in a constrained scenario. The stories were annotated according to features commonly found in existing automatic story generators. The annotation was designed to measure the proportion and relations of story components that should be used in automatic computational systems for matching human behaviour. Results suggest that there are relatively common patterns that can be used as input data for identifying similarity to human-invented stories in automatic storytelling systems. The found patterns are in line with narratological models, and the results provide numerical quantification and layout of story components. The proposed method of story analysis is tested over two additional sources, the ROCStories corpus and stories generated by automated storytellers, to illustrate the valuable insights that may be derived from them

Story generation driven by system-modified evaluation validated by human judges

Abstract. Building systems which can transform their own generation processes can lead to the creation of novel high quality artefacts. In this paper a solution based on evaluation is proposed. The generation process is driven by evaluation rules which can be modified by the system. A panel of human evaluators provides feedback on the quality of the artifacts resulting after each modification. The system keeps track of which rules have been applied in the selection of each artifact, and learns indirectly from the human judges which modifications to retain based on the relative ratings of the artifacts. Relevant details and di culties of this approach are discussed

A Component-Based Architecture for Suspense Modelling

Suspense is a key narrative issue in terms of emotional gratification, influencing directly the way in which the audience experiences a story. Disciplines like psychology, neurology or e-learning study the suspense as the basis of useful techniques for the treatment of mental diseases or improving memory skills and the comprehension. In the field of creativity, it’s an essential cross strategy found in almost any book, film and video-game plots, regardless of technology and genre. With the objective of generating engaging stories, some automatic storytelling systems implement a suspense generation module. These systems are mainly based on narrative theories. However, we observe a lack of aspects from behavioral sciences, involving the study of empathy and emotional effect of scene objects in the audience. Generated plots with an adequate treatment of these features may involve benefits in areas as education and psychology. In this paper, we propose a component-based architectural model that firstly aims to identify and extract all these individual factors of the suspense from a scene; in a second step, the system calculates the level of suspense using a weighted corpus; in the last step, it alters those elements to increase or decrease the original suspense level and reassembles them in a new scene. Further, we discuss the model facing the development challenges and its practical implications.This work has been funded by the Andalusian Government under the University of Cadiz programme for Researching and Innovation in Education. This paper has been partially supported by the projects WHIM 611560 and PROSECCO 600653 funded by the European Commission, Framework Program 7, the ICT theme, and the Future and Emerging Technologies FET program.8 page

Formalising suspense from immersive environments

Abstract. Survival horror video-games have acquired great acceptance in recent years. Immersion, ease of play, virtual reality gadgets and emotional intensity have helped to popularise them. Famous youtubers still perform their videos based on these games, counting millions of viewers even if the design of them is very similar in terms of atmosphere, limited actions and mapping. Usually conceived as suspense-evoking threatening environments to explore and escape, this similarity may lead to think about automatising the generation of products of this genre. In this paper, suspense definitions are reviewed from the view of emotional e↵ects. Further, we propose a formula relating suspense to dimensions valence, arousal and dominance. Finally, we present an experiment that supports its application for a horror game

Predictive Composition of Pictogram Messages for Users with Autism.

Communication is a basic need for every person. However, there are many people who present disabilities that prevent communication through natural language. Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems, including those based on pictograms, attempt to facilitate the communication for people with this kind of difficulties. In this paper we present PictoEditor, an augmentative and alternative communication application for the composition of pictogram messages for users with autism that incorporates prediction functionalities. Although such functionalities have been widely studied in text-based augmentative and alternative communication tools, they have not been applied to pictogram based ones. The results show that prediction based on frequency of use of specific pictograms improves the immediate availability of the desired pictograms, but the improvement with prediction based on sequencing of pseudo-syntactic types of pictogram is not as clear.pre-print4500 K

Mixed narrative and dialog content planning based on BDI agents

There exist various narrative systems, focused on different parts of the complex process of story generation. Some of them are oriented to content planning, and some to sentence planning, with different properties and characteristics. In this paper we propose a system based on BDI agents that generates stories (creating content, performing content planning and simple sentence planning) with narrative parts and dialogs. The content for the story is generated in a multiagent social simulation system, and the content planning is based on rules and a state space search algorithm based on the system representation of the reader’s perception of the story

Confronting a Paradox: A New Perspective of the Impact of Uncertainty in Suspense

Suspense is a key narrative issue in terms of emotional gratifications. Reactions in response to this type of entertainment are positively related to enjoyment, having a significant impact on the audience's immersion and suspension of disbelief. Related to computational modeling of this feature, some automatic storytelling systems include limited implementations of suspense management system in their core. In this way, the interest of this subject in the area of creativity has resorted to different definitions from fields as narratology and the film industry, as much as several proposals of its constituent features. Among their characteristics, uncertainty is one of the most discussed in terms of impact and need: while many authors affirm that uncertainty is essential to evoke suspense, others limit or reject its influence. Furthermore, the paradox of suspense reflects the problem of including uncertainty as a component required in suspense creation systems. Due to this need to contrast the effects of the uncertainty in order to compute a general model for automatic storytelling systems, we conducted an experiment measuring suspense experienced by a group of subjects that read a story. While a group of them were told the ending of the story in advance, the members of the other group experimented the same story in chronological order. Both the subjects' reported suspense and their physiological responses are gathered and analyzed. Results provide evidence to conclude that uncertainty affects the emotional response of readers, but independently and in a different form than suspense does. It will help to propose a model in which uncertainty is processed separately as management of the amount of knowledge about the outcome available to the spectator, which acts as a control signal to modulate the input features, but not directly in suspense computing