Computer Models of Musical Creativity

Computer Models of Musical Creativity
Chapter 2: Background

• Surprise is a necessary ingredient in creativity
• Associationism - a view that creativity stems of unconscious or subconscious associations - linking thoughts, ideas, experiences, and images
• Letter Spirit, a program used to creatively make new fonts, operates with decision waves - unifying operations that consist of "the gradual, slow-but-sure tightening up of internal consistency all across the structure under construction"
• Cope feels that focusing on details is not the important part of a creative work
• The Turing test may also be an adequate gauge of creativity
• Creativity is not an output, rather, it is a function
• Creativity is not necessarily audible - it is only perceptible when the method of creation is known
  
• "Most recent research in artificial intelligence and creativity tends to focus on connectionism, geneticism, and expertism"
  
• "Full-scale creativity consists in having a keen sense for what is interesting, following it recursively, applying it at the meta-level, and modifying it accordingly" - Hofstadter
• "I do not believe ... that all humans share a common aesthetic"
• "It is the processes, rather than their output, that best identify creativity"
• "The results of creativity should be different from the results of other processes"
• "Creativity is a process, not the result of a process"
  

These constitute the notes I took on my reading today.

Computer Models of Musical Creativity

Computer Models of Musical Creativity
Chapter 1: Definitions

• Many see creativity as restricted to humans
• If humans can't create creative machines, then are they really creative in the first place?
• Two important questions when considering creativity: must the creator know what he or she is creating and must they appreciate his or her own creation?
• Creativity is directly related to intelligence
• Intelligence consists of the following abilities: to learn, to remember, to infer, to analogize, and to create
• Combinatorial accidents can be powerful creative tools and also produce striking originality
  
• "Originality must be useful"
• "Cross-wiring can produce interesting, unique, and important creative connections"
• "Vertically thinking is selective and analytical, while lateral thinking is generative and instigative"
• Cope's definition of creativity: "The initialization of connections between two or more multifaceted things, ideas, or phenomena hitherto not otherwise considered actively connected"
• "I do not feel that creativity requires intelligence, nor does it consequently require life"
• "Creativity should never be confused with arbitrary or convenient contrivances that simply take any road untried for the sake of novelty"
  

These constitute the notes I took on my reading today.