A Framework for Description, Analysis and Comparison of Creative Systems

Abstract

I summarise and attempt to clarify some concepts presented in and aris- ing 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 ‘cre- ative’ 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.