Hiroaki Kitano is Director at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Tokyo. He leads the Kitano Symbiotic Systems Project aimed at understanding system-level principles of biological systems. He is also one of the initiators of the robot soccer world cup RoboCup. The ultimate goal of RoboCup is to make possible the development of a team of robot soccer players that can beat a human World Cup champion.
Dr. Margret Boden is one of the world’s most renowned researchers in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, cognitive and computer science. She is Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the Department of Informatics at the University of Sussex.
Bogdan Soban is a Slovenian artist and engineer working in the field of computer generated art. His artworks can be found at www.soban-art.com.
- How would you define creativity?
It is not easy to invent a new and original definition of creativity because a great number of different definitions can be found in the psychological literature. I can only explain the definition that suits the most with my personal feeling about the phenomena and fits with my creative approach in art.
The human creativity is the ability to take existing objects and combine them in different ways for new purposes. It is the ability to generate novel and useful ideas and solutions, which could be described as the combination of previous uncombined elements.
There are some properties very characteristic for creativity: the way of the creative process is not known in advance, it doesn't exist useful guide how to become creative, there is no any methodology how to perform a creative process, the author of a creation has problems to describe how he arrived at the final result, the results are unpredictable as a rule, usually the creative process depends on combination of different coincidences, the time of the process plays very important role, it is impossible to repeat the creative process once again in a same way obtaining the same result and so on.
Creativity researches, mostly from field of psychology, usually claim that being creative means being novel and appropriate. Subsumed under the appropriateness criterion are qualities of fit, utility and value. New, unpredictable, unique and unrepeatable solutions are result of human mind, said also of brain processing in words of informational technology.
Often great solutions are products of silly ideas, which don't seem to follow rules, and are consequently thrown out. Modification of these ideas can result in fantastic solutions using unusual path to the desired objective.
- What is generative art?
I can describe generative art as an artificial creative process based usually on informational technology with the purpose to produce artworks, architectural solutions, industrial design, poems and other creations which were historically in the domain of human. From the other point of view, generative art is a method how to draw out the creative power from machine and to offer, uncommon solutions to the humanity, which might never be produced by human. Naturally, generative processes have to be supported by complex rules - program codes - created by humans.
From my point of view, the most important fact concerning generative art is that the authors develop generative programs by themselves. This approach requires the knowledge of computer programming on the one hand and a deep felling for art, aesthetic, colors, and composition on the other. Generative art is an instructive example of a very deep connection between art and science, usually an indispensable property for world famous artists.
Using generative approaches with success, it is not enough to have a brilliant idea, but one needs to transform the idea into inexpressive, impersonal and heartless algorithms and mathematical formulas, which represent the rules for the machine - the computer.
For me the program code is a way to express an idea that could be understandable for the computer. The personal development of the generative programs enables the author to produce original and unique results, which distinguish him from all others.
The next important discussion on generative art is the level of the autonomy the author permits to the process or the level of the program interactivity in terms of informational technology. Null or low interactivity level requires high programming efforts to obtain good results while vice-versa concept gives the author the possibilities to correct the process in real-time.
In any case, generative art is a typical artificial creative process where the author sets up his rules at the beginning and makes the selection of generated results at the end. What is going on in the middle is unpredictable and sometimes incomprehensible.
- What is the role of the artist when working with computer generated art?
The area of digital art is treated in two very different ways: computer generated and computer aided art.
Computer aided art means that the computer is only a very powerful tool controlled by the artist, and the work is created by human: using Freehand to create an image, for example, where mouse and screen are used instead of brush and canvas. The creative process is going on inside the artist's head, as is characteristic for a classical approach.
Computer generated art means to create artworks using autonomous processes with no direct artist's control. The role of the artist is to get an idea, to create the process, to start the process and to make the selection of generated works. Pure computer generated artworks are not influenced by any kind of the artist emotions.
In any case, the artist must have the basic idea of what he wants to realize using generative art approach, and the basic idea is a human creation. The main problem is how to "explain" to the computer the elements of the idea, and this is the next human creation.
To write the program code means to define rules for the machine. There are two programming types, which use pragmatic or mathematical instructions with different influence on the level of unpredictability of results. Pragmatically designed programs are more useful for design purposes where the artist needs to create only variants of a defined object.
How to design a glass for wine for example: by variation of dimensions the computer can offer an immense number of different glasses but all of them are glasses. This kind of program can't generate a bottle for example. Programs that use mathematical instructions are much more agreeable for producing art. The area of art is absolutely free so the program based on mathematical instruction can produce unexpected colored shapes, forms and compositions.
The next task for the artist is to start the process. From the process point of view there are two program types: autonomous with no artist's access and interactive with limited artist's influence.
The final selection of created artworks is also the artist's task when he demonstrates his personal feeling for beauty and aesthetics. The artist is absolutely involved in four phases of artificial creative process: basic idea, rule definition, process start and selection of results. The creative process as the most important phase could be only partially controlled by artist or not at all.
- What are the new challenges for human creativity in a world where machines have taken over a big part of the creative process?
The time when machines will take over a big part of the creative processes is not so far away as it seems. The human creativity will be focused on developing more and more sophisticated systems able to substitute human creativity with artificial everywhere it is possible and logical.
Artificial creativity is a branch of Artificial Intelligence that deals with the development and exploration of systems that exhibit creative behavior. This includes systems capable of such things as scientific invention, visual artistry, music composition and story generation. I underline this definition in order to warn to the fact that human emotions are always left out when discussing about artificial creativity.
As long as the rule "combination of previous uncombined elements" will be strictly taken into consideration, there will be enough space for human creativity. So the new challenge will remain in these areas where human emotions are irreplaceable. These are top-level inventions and creations or better new cognitions, which doesn't track any rule and are sometimes the products of silly ideas. The power of human mind is immense and I'm not afraid that humanity will begin to vegetate.
Humanity still has a lot of questions without answers: where we come from and where we are heading, if we are the only humans in the cosmos, time relativity, cosmos dimension, the power of alternative medicine, predicting the future and similar. Such problems could not be solved with machines because the concept of previous uncombined elements doesn't work. Philosophical questions need self-consciousness, a property that will never be owned by machines.
- Do you think that machines ever will reach a stage of intelligence where they can generate art without the creative input of humans?
At first we have to distinguish between creativity and intelligence.
Creativity is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts (to combine previous non combined elements).
The intelligence is a property of mind that encompasses many related abilities such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn.
Artificial Creativity is a branch of Artificial Intelligence based on trying to make machines creative or to understand creativity by doing research in making machines creative. Artificial Intelligence is defined as intelligence exhibited by an artificial, non-natural, man-made entity or machine. The modern definition of artificial intelligence is "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximizes its chances of success. Considering all definitions, to make the machine creative is an easier task than to make it intelligent.
Genetic programming is based on a concept where a computer program creates new computer programs. The method is known under the name "reproduction" where the human input became irrelevant with the growth of level numbers. After an immense number of reproduction levels, the human creative input is null and the machine is absolutely free and autonomous to create artificial art. But this ability doesn't mean that the machine has an intelligent level comparable to human.
And for conclusion: how to explain the phenomena, that Nature creates art without the creative input of humans and without being intelligent in any human way?
Charlie Gere is Director of Research at the Institute for Cultural Research at Lancaster University. He has written seminal works about the cultural effects and meanings of technology and media, particularly in relation to art and philosophy, in books like Digital Culture (2002) and Art, Time and Technology: Histories of the Disappearing Body (2006).
In your book "Art, time and technology" you draw on Walter Benjamin's insight that the history of art can be seen as a series of artistic responses to technological change, whereby artworks can - to simplify matters - be read as the inscription of a new relation to time.
What kind of idea about creativity does this view imply? And is it possible against this background to define "creativity" as an innate human capacity that is independent of technology and tools?
The term 'artificial creativity', like 'artificial intelligence' is interesting, in that it presumes on some kind of prior concept of a 'natural' intelligence, which can be supplemented or mimicked by the artificial. Such a distinction between the natural and the artificial is I think untenable.
Human intelligence and human creativity are always already both artificial and natural, in the sense that both are the results of our particular evolved animality, but also that both involve making, 'facere', as 'artifice', out of what is available to us as a species. Humanity is intimately bound up with technics.
Thus if there can be no humanity without technicity, then there certainly can be no 'creativity' as an innate human capacity that is independent of technology and tools.
So, where does that leave the concept of "creativity"?
In fact, I am troubled by the word 'creativity', which is banded around a great deal, especially now in relation to the so-called 'creative industries'. To create means, for me, to make something out of nothing. If I was religious I would say that is a prerogative reserved solely for God. I prefer Jacques Derrida's conception of 'invention' described in his essay 'Psyche: Inventions of the Other'.
Derrida distinguishes invention from any theological concept of creation and thus creativity, and defines it as something that 'finds for the first time', meaning both 'an event without precedent whose novelty must be either that of the (invented) thing found, or else the act and not the object of "finding" or "discovering"'. For Derrida 'invention', with its etymological connection to venire, is about that which comes, the event.
Against this background, do you think that machines can be creative or rather "inventive"?
It is possible that machines can make things with a degree of autonomy, but whether these will be interesting as works of art is another question, in that machines in themselves can precisely only be programmatic, can only follow a rule.
On the other hand what a machine 'creates' may produce for the viewer a kind of singularity and evince a kind of otherness, in which case it is possible that the inventiveness is a product of his or her response rather than any 'creativity' on the part of the machine itself.
But this in turn reinstates precisely the division I criticised at the beginning of this reply, between the artificial and the natural. Perhaps a better way of thinking about this is to be found in a statement by British anthropologist and cyberneticist Gregory Bateson. In this quote it is instructive in this context to replace the word 'thinks' with the word 'creates'.
Now let us consider for a moment the question of whether a computer thinks. I would state that it does not. What 'thinks' and engages in 'trial and error' is the man plus the computer plus the environment. And the lines between man, computer, environment are purely artificial, fictitious lines.
