Computer Models of Musical Creativity (David Cope)
Chapter 2: Background

  • Surprise is a necessary ingredient in creativity
  • Associationism - a view that creativity stems of unconscious or subconscious associations – linking thoughts, ideas, experiences, and images
  • Letter Spirit, a program used to creatively make new fonts, operates withdecision waves – unifying operations that consist of “the gradual, slow-but-sure tightening up of internal consistency all across the structure under construction”
  • Cope feels that focusing on details is not the important part of a creative work
  • The Turing test may also be an adequate gauge of creativity
  • Creativity is not an output, rather, it is a function
  • Creativity is not necessarily audible – it is only perceptible when the method of creation is known
  • “Most recent research in artificial intelligence and creativity tends to focus on connectionism, geneticism, and expertism”
  • “Full-scale creativity consists in having a keen sense for what is interesting, following it recursively, applying it at the meta-level, and modifying it accordingly” – Hofstadter
  • “I do not believe … that all humans share a common aesthetic”
  • “It is the processes, rather than their output, that best identify creativity”
  • “The results of creativity should be different from the results of other processes”
  • “Creativity is a process, not the result of a process“