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Boden, M. A. (2011). Creativity & art: Three roads to surprise. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Added by: alexb44 (05/03/2025, 10:20) Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard (19/11/2025, 00:40) |
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| Resource type: Book Language: en: English Peer reviewed Published ID no. (ISBN etc.): 978–0–19–959073–5 BibTeX citation key: Boden2011 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: AI/Machine Learning, Embodied Cognition Keywords: Art, Creativity Creators: Boden Publisher: Oxford University Press (Oxford) |
Views: 3/231
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| Abstract |
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Preface: Margaret Boden is one of the leading researchers on creativity. Her important book, The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms (2nd ed, Routledge, 2004), is a systematic account of the nature of creativity, which argues for the value of computer modelling in understanding creative processes, both scientific and artistic, and discusses computers that can replicate scientific discoveries and produce artworks. Building on her views in that book, the current volume concentrates almost exclusively on creativity in art, and, although it is only tangentially concerned with computer modelling of creativity, it contains an extended account of computer art that goes considerably beyond her earlier discussion. Comprised of an Introduction and eleven papers, two of them wholly new, it covers a wide range of topics, including the distinction between art and craft; the aesthetics of interactive art, where she notes that there is no settled standard of aesthetic evaluation; a discussion of the view that A-Life (computer simulation of life) is genuine life, which she convincingly refutes on the grounds that A-Life entities have no metabolism, in the sense of the use and budgeting of energy for bodily maintenance and behaviour; and a fascinating account of the project by the computer artist, Paul Brown, who is attempting to use line-drawing robots to create artworks that bear no trace of his personal ‘signature’, a project the success of which Boden is somewhat sceptical about, since Brown has to choose the evaluative criteria for the selection of the artworks. Despite their variety, two broad themes run through the essays: an account of three types of creativity and their application to artworks and types of art, and a defence of the existence of computer art.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard |
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p. 25
"Some aesthetic values (as suggested in Chapter 4) may be enduring, because they are part of our biological heritage. But many are culturally based. [...] Values in general, whether enduring or not, can’t be justified—even though they may sometimes be explained—in scientific terms. In that sense, and in that sense alone, both creativity and art lie for ever beyond the reach of science."
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(18/11/2025, 03:46)
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p. 29
"Creativity is the ability to come up with ideas or artefacts that are new, surprising, and valuable."
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(18/11/2025, 04:21)
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p. 30
"P-creativity involves coming up with a surprising, valuable idea that’s new to the person who comes up with it. It doesn’t matter how many people have had that idea before. But if a new idea is H-creative, that means that (so far as we know) no one else has had it before: it has arisen for the first time in human history."
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(18/11/2025, 04:23)
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p. 31
"An idea may be surprising because it’s unfamiliar, or even unlikely— like a 100-to-1 outsider winning the Derby. This sort of surprise goes against statistics.
The second sort of surprise is more interesting. An unexpected idea may ‘‘fit’’ into a style of thinking that you already had—but you’re surprised because you hadn’t realized that this particular idea was part of it. Maybe you’re even intrigued to find that an idea of this general type fits into the familiar style. And the third sort of surprise is more interesting still: this is the astonishment you feel on encountering an apparently impossible idea. It just couldn’t have entered anyone’s head, you feel—and yet it did. It may even engender other ideas which, yesterday, you’d have thought equally impossible. What on earth can be going on?"
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(18/11/2025, 04:26)
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p. 39
What is valuable is more difficult to say. "Our aesthetic values are difficult to recognize, more difficult to put into words, and even more difficult to state really clearly" and values change across cultures, from subculture to subculture, and so on, even within science where descriptions can be vague or the value placed on a hypothesis (worthwhile or not and within what context) can vary. "Because creativity by definition involves not only novelty but value, and because values are highly variable, it follows that many arguments about creativity are rooted in disagreements about value."
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(18/11/2025, 05:10)
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p. 31
There are three paths to creativity:
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
(18/11/2025, 04:52)
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