A Framework for Description, Analysis and Comparison of Creative Systems

Abstract

Abstract I summarise and attempt to clarify some concepts presented in and arising from Margaret Boden’s descriptive hierarchy of creativity (Boden, M. A., The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms, 2nd Ed., Routledge, London, 2004), by formalising the ideas she proposes. The aim is to move towards a model which allows detailed comparison, and hence better understanding, of systems, whether artificial, natural or hybrid, which exhibit behaviour which would be called ‘creative’ in humans. The framework paves the way for the description of naturalistic, multi-agent creative artificial intelligence systems, which create in a societal context. I demonstrate some simple reasoning about creative behaviour based on the new framework, to show how it might be useful for the analysis and study of creative systems. In particular, I identify some crucial properties of creative systems, in terms of the framework components, some of which may usefully be proven a priori of a given system. Finally, I exemplify the use of the framework by broadly describing the development of art music from the 10th to the 20th century in these more formal terms.