Event overview
AISB50 Public Lecture - open to the general public - everyone welcome
Abstract: Computational Creativity research comprises the art, science, philosophy and engineering of software which, by taking on certain responsibilities, would be called creative by unbiased observes. In particular, we try to hand over creative responsibilities to software so that it can act as a creative collaborator, or an independently creative entity. Mirroring Artificial Intelligence research in general, there are often weak and strong aims to our projects. Weak aims target the improved generation of intriguing and engaging artefacts, such as poems, paintings, musical compositions, video games, mathematical theories and designs. Projects with strong aims look to convince people that it is appropriate to use the word creative to describe the behaviour of autonomous software. Many projects have both weak and strong aims, and these are often conflicting and contradictory. In the talk, I will raise these issues in a general philosophical context, covering other areas such as how to assess creative progress in software and the humanity gap.
The Painting Fool is software that we have developed for more than a decade, with the aim that it is one day accepted as a creative artist in its own right (http://www.thepaintingfool.com). This raises as many sociological as technical issues, and in the second half of the talk, I will present The Painting Fool as an emerging artist from both weak and strong Computational Creativity perspectives. In particular, I will discuss the recent You Can’t Know my Mind exhibit within a Computational Creativity festival. Here, the portraits that The Painting Fool produced were directed by a mood model driven by constantly reading newspaper articles, and in some cases, if it was in a particularly bad mood, it would refuse to paint a portrait at all, citing good reasons for its decision. When in a better mood, a portrait is painted live, in an attempt to capture that mood – and at the end of the process the software assesses how well it has done with pre-trained Artificial Neural Networks. For this project, we enabled The Painting Fool to express behaviours which involve skill, appreciation, imagination, learning, reflection, accountability and intentionality, and in the talk, I hope to convince the audience that it might be appropriate to call this software creative in its own right.
Bio: Simon Colton is a Professor of Computational Creativity in the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London, and also an EPSRC leadership fellow. His research interests have covered many areas of Artificial Intelligence and philosophy, all within a context of Computational Creativity, where the aim is to engineer autonomously creative software. He has published more than 150 papers, and his research has been recognised with national and international awards. He leads the Computational Creativity Research Group at Goldsmiths (ccg.doc.gold.ac.uk), which comprises 12 people investigating issues surrounding creative systems with applications to pure mathematics, graphic design, creative language, ideation, the visual arts and videogame design. Prof. Colton is best known for his work on creative systems such as The Painting Fool (http://www.thepaintingfool.com), for which the aim is to build an automated painter which is one day taken seriously as a creative artist in its own right. His work has been covered by the New Scientist, BBC Horizon, BBC radio, The Observer, Wired, Stuff magazine, Reuters, Al-Jazeera, More 4 News, The Metro, El Pais and many other news outlets.
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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3 Apr 2014 | 6:00pm - 7:00pm |
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