Casually Evolving Creative Technology Systems

Computational Creativity : An Interdisciplinary Approach

计算机科学;物理学

Matthew Lewis

PID  :  80074

学科分类：计算机科学（综合）

来源: CEUR

【 摘 要 】

This position paper will describe the early stages of a development effort in which an interactiveevolutionary design approach is being applied to the domain of technologybased system development, ina new media art and design context. These systems connect different technologies and techniques in orderto process and transform data of one type into another. For example, location data might be used to selecta relevant network information feed, the text of which drives geometry generation, which in turn could besent to a 3D printer that would produce a sculpture.While the flexibility of this problem domain isidiosyncratic to our interdisciplinary new media environment, the target physical context for using acreativity support tool, and the context’s effect on creative output is rather the primary research focus.The goal is to explore the possibilities of what might be termed “casual design”, analogous to the “casualgaming” genre in which games are played by anyone, where ever they might find a few spare minutes,rather than requiring significant time and hardware commitments.Problem Domain and Solution SpaceIn my position at our research center, I'm fortunate to enjoy constant interactions between manydisciplines, collaborating with and teaching art and design graduate students and faculty who arepassionate about seeking creative applications of emerging technology. Their work usuallyinvolves broadly interdisciplinary knowledge. Recent and current projects include glass artistsbuilding software, architects making responsive sound environments, product designersintegrating social networking software, and choreographers visualizing databases. It is notuncommon for a researcher to have a concept or process they want to work with, but to havegreat flexibility in how they are willing to collaborate. When innovative technology solutions aresought, like any researcher we rely on our knowledge of prior work, searching memories andarchives for recent discoveries that might apply and connect in new ways. Since our center is anemerging technology resource for all of the art and design affiliated departments at ouruniversity, we are usually approached with a specific design problem, but the investigator may ormay not have a particular technology or approach in mind. Usually a significant number ofresearch questions remain open. The situation is reminiscent of the way writers often talk ofbuilding a story from a seed of a single character, location, or situation, and then finding where it