Incorporating characteristics of human creativity into an evolutionary art algorithm

Abstract

A perceived limitation of evolutionary art and design algorithms is that they rely on human intervention; the artist selects the most aesthetically pleasing variants of one generation to produce the next. This paper discusses how computer generated art and design can become more creatively human-like with respect to both process and outcome. As an example of a step in this direction, we present an algorithm that overcomes the above limitation by employing an automatic fitness function. The goal is to evolve abstract portraits of Darwin, using our 2 nd generation fitness function which rewards genomes that not just produce a likeness of Darwin but exhibit certain strategies characteristic of human artists. We note that in human creativity, change is less choosing amongst randomly generated variants and more capitalizing on the associative structure of a conceptual network to hone in on a vision. We discuss how to achieve this fluidity algorithmically.

Expression-Based Evolution of Faces

“…This approach contrasts with the ones used by Ventrella [19] and DiPaola [3] where a general purpose evolutionary art tool is used. Both approaches are akin to a classical symbolic regression problem in the sense that a target image exists and the similarity between the evolved images and the target image is used to assign fitness.…”

An artist's experience in using an evolutionary algorithm to produce an animated artwork

“…A wide variety of evolutionary approaches have been used to generate art works, e.g. genetic algorithms (Ciesielski et al, 2007;Collomosse, 2008) genetic programming (Dipaola and Gabora, 2009;Machado and Cardoso, 2002) and ant colony optimisation (Monmarche et al, 2008;Semet et al, 2004). A number of these art works have been on a botanical/flora/plant growth theme.…”

Exploring Persian rug design using a computational evolutionary approach

“…The most cited advantage of the evolutionary approach is that a more diverse area of the design space can be explored. The other advantages include but not limit to facilitating product design, producing unexpected designs (sometimes even beyond the imagery of human's mind), and allowing non-expert designers to discover interesting design solutions rather constructing them (DiPaola & Gabora, 2009).…”

“…While subjective evaluation is a successful technique, it has several disadvantages such as slowing down system speed and the impracticability of giving a human all the possible solutions to judge. Therefore, most systems of this type can restrict the evolutionary procedure (DiPaola & Gabora, 2009). On the other hand, developing an intelligent and comprehensive definition of what is satisfactory or pleasant as an artwork seems impossible so that the final judgment has always been subjective, inevitably.…”