Computational Creativity - A Reflection

Scholars can be Artists Too

creativity, n.

“The faculty of being creative; ability or power to create.”

What does it mean to Create?

Humans define themselves as a species as inventors. We may not be the fastest or strongest but we have a strong ability to adapt our environment to suit our needs.

We create what we need. We create what we want. We create.

There are those who work professionally in creative fields but also many who create as hobby. These are what Compton calls casual creators. There is a whole market geared entirely toward these people who create just for fun.

Archeology and Photographs

The use of the photograph in archeology has long been used to capture still images of acheological Photography as an art form often leads viewers to believe that it is a truthful representation of reality - that it objective.Copplestone point out that in the field of archeology conventional uses of photography often go unquestioned while artistic processes have been both celebrated and problematized. And yet there have been a number of creative tools commonly made use of within the discipline of archeology, including:

-Photo-manipulation: a fairly common tool that is usually done to make an image more accessible and true to life -Photobashing: a less commonly used method to capture a mechanical process through a subjective lens

This belief in the mirroring aspects of photography is what allows it to be such a convincing fallacy in which we see brief scenes as though they are a factual illustration of everyday life. Photography is often considered to be one of the most accurate representations of the past and yet all images are syphoned through multiple levels of mediation that affect accuracy. The image is a cropped version of reality that removes everything extending past the frame of the photograph. And so, the past is made incomplete through the limitations of photography and opened to the interpretation of the viewers who are essentially just outsiders looking in. So while photobashing is often seen as impacting the validity of archeological photographs it is important to note that we should not always view images as entire visions of the truth. Creative ways of rehashing these images allows new perspectives.

Interactive Fictions

There are more tools on the market that change the way that we read and write new stories. The stories are becoming more interactive and collaboratively built. There are more ways of generating text through online tools. These tools, such as Twine, are also being drawn into the academic sphere. McCall describes the way that interactive text is being used as a tool for students studying history - there is an influx of historical simulation games. Providing students with the opportunity to create these games enables them to gain related skills, which McCall describes as:

-“The ability to research, evaluate, and analyze evidence about the past

-The ability to combine pieces of evidence into a plausible interpretation of the past

-The ability to discriminate between the critical and trivial parts of a historical event or process

-The ability to use these skills to develop defensible, coherent, and meaningful interpretations of the past”

Links

Find my annotations here.

Written on February 22, 2018