Joint AASS & CREA Seminar - Human-computer co-creativity in improvised music

The research centre AASS arranges a seminar with René Morgensen, Birmingham City University, UK.

Abstract

Is it possible for a computer to be creative? Is creativity computable?

We may judge artefacts and concepts made by humans as creative products without having a clear view of what human creativity is or how it works; but if it is possible to make a "computer creativity" then it must also be possible to make a specification of what it does computationally, even if creativity might be an emergent property.

I approach "creativity" as a family of categories and this allows the defining of a formal specification for computational creativity which can diverge from human creativity in terms of functionalities and products. The specification is based on "creativity" being evident in products, in other words artefacts or concepts, and these products are arrived at through learning processes.

To ground these investigations I look at computational creativity implementations that improvise with human soloists in music performances: in these music works humans and the computational creativity systems are partners in musical "dialogues" and can be understood as engaging in human-computer co-creativity, where the computational partner is in a symbiotic musical relationship with humans, all within a "human activity system".