My presentation entitled 'AI, Creativity and Generative Art', presented at the annual symposium for AI students (CKI) at Utrecht University, Fri. June 16th, 2017

1. AI, Creativity and
Generative Art
CKI Symposium
Universiteit Utrecht
16 Juni 2017
Eelco den Heijer

2. •What is Creativity?
•Man-Machine Creativity
•Generative Art
•Examples; EvoArt, Arfunkel,
Dichtfabriek
•Issues with Generative Art

3. eelco den heijer
•Developer/ Architect/ Scrum
Master
•Part-time Researcher
•MSc Cognitive Artificial Intelligence
(Utrecht)
•PhD at Computational Intelligence
Group, VU, with Guszti Eiben
(2009-2013)
•Dad, living together, Amsterdam

5. What is Creativity?
• Margaret Boden - Creativity and Art: Three
Roads to Surprise
• Create something 1) new, and 2) of value
• Combinational - unusual combination of
usual ideas
• Exploration - like local search in concept
space
• Transformational - transforming a concept
in concept space, ‘changing the rules’

6. Combinational Creativity

7. Exploratory Creativity

8. Transformational Creativity

9. Man-Machine
Generative
Art
Man
Made
Art
Digital
Designer
Computer
Assisted
Design
Evolu-
tionary
Art
machineman
Parametric
Design

14. •Algorithmic Art, Computer art
•Process
•Autonomy, Independence from
author, creator
•Randomness
Generative Art

15. •Process Art very old
•Sol Lewitt, Instruction Art
•Mozart, Würfelspiel
•Computers, software, AI are
excellent tools for processes
Process

17. • Randomness

18. Sol Lewitt
Wall Drawing #1084

19. •Several composers used
formalised methods, games
•Mozart, Haydn?
•Lookup table, two dice
•Composition process
Würfelspiel

21. Randomness
•Necessary to create something
unexpected
•Will almost certainly lead to new
ideas
•Will potentially lead to bad ideas
•Stochastic vs. deterministic
•Edge of Chaos

22. Computer Art
•Started around 1965, Germany
•Primitive software, primitive
hardware
•No advanced graphics cards, no
5K screens
•Drawing Machines

29. Outline AI Art System
Generate Evaluate
“Artist” “Critic”
Feedback
*

30. How do we generate art?
•First, we need a process to
generate an image
•Next, we need a process to
evaluate them

31. Image generation
•From scratch; a model, math tools
(fractals), CA, live coding
(Processing)
•Existing image, manipulate it
•Existing images, blend them,
manipulate them

32. AI Techniques
•Knowledge based
•Grammars, Markov chains
•Evolutionary Algorithms
•Neural nets, Deep Learning
•Etc.

33. A-Life
•Based on principles from Biology
(vs. Psychology)
•Very simple, low-level processes
•E.g. Replication
•Lindemayer Systems (L-Systems)
•Cellular Automata

34. Outline AI Art System
Generate Evaluate
“Artist” “Critic”
Feedback
*

35. Image evaluation
•Evaluate what exactly? What are
you looking for?
•Beauty?
•Shock? Conceptual art?
•Manual or Automated?
•Computational Aesthetics

36. Computational Aesthetics
•Tries to compute beauty (but what is
beauty?)
•Focus on parts:
•Complexity
•Symmetry
•Colour harmony, contrast

37. Examples of
Generative Art

41. EvoArt
•Computational Aesthetics
•Several functions to assess various
‘aspects of beauty’
•Multiple Genotypes; expression,
SVG, Glitch
•Autonomous EvoArt system (vs.
Interactive Evo Art)

45. Scalable Vector Graphics
•XML based vector file format
•Used as a genotype
•Custom Crossovers, Mutations
•More figurative than expression
based genotype
•Initalization is difficult

47. Glitch
•Niche computer art movement
•Manipulation of binary encoding of
images
•GIF, BMP, PNG, JPG
•Process: existing image, basic steps,
recipe=> filter
•Very basic byte array operations
•Beware of image death

48. Glitch program;
image=lena_colour.raw
commands=
and 0.308 960f78
reverse 0.909 0.002
insert 0.457 53cf3a147872a0751f8b
or 0.186 d9c5

51. Arfunkel
•Art Functions
•Research project in Functional
Programming in Java 8
•Collection of building blocks that act
on Images
•Generators
•Filters
•Merge/Combine

52. Functions
•Create functions; starting point
•Unary: one input image, filters
•Binary: two or more input images; blend/
merge
•Higher order: iterators, non-linear
functions

53. Create/Get Image
•Using APIs; Yahoo, Google Images,
Pexels, Pixabay, Google Streetview,
Flickr, Tumblr
•Generative: line art, graffiti
•Local file system

55. Standard Filters
•Non-disruptive
•Pixel-by-Pixel
•Colour filters
•Recolouring
•OpenCV

56. Colour mapper

57. Non-Standard Filters
• Disruptive
• Pixelsorting
• Glitch
• Morph/ Baconizer
• Displacement/ Distortion
• Mirror
• Etc.

58. Pixelsorting

59. Glitch

60. Displacement

61. Mirror

62. The Baconizer

64. Workflow ex. 1
Get Image Recolour Pixelsort
Mirror
Left/Right

65. Workflow ex. 2
Get Image
Get Image
Blend
Recolour
Mirror
Left/Right
Recolour

73. Conclusions Arfunkel
•Combinational and Exploration
Creativity
•Parametric Design and Generative Art
•Will it ever ‘break the rules’?
•In theory: it might
•In practice; difficult to ‘find’ balance
novelty and quality
•REPL - Read Eval Print Loop

74. Quality/ Value
Novelty

75. What’s next?
•The search space for generative art is
(too) large
•Fundamental question: what are you
looking for?
•In other words; when is an image ‘art’?
•Automate the search process!
•Computational Aesthetics

76. Too bad, nobody wants it…
•It’s made by a computer…
•It doesn’t mean anything
•There is no author…
•You didn’t go to art school
•Two Cultures (C.P. Snow)

79. Example 3: Dichtfabriek
•Dichtfabriek: Poetry Factory
•Proof of Concept
•Collaboration between me and
Wouter van der Land
•Built in Python

80. Dichtfabriek
• Kind of “Poetry Remix engine”
• Indexes poetry, stores word sequences (Markov
chain)
• Produces a number of poetry forms:
• snowball (based on anagrams)
• limerick
• haikus
• ABAB

81. at
Art
prat
Praet
patser
Stapert
raptekst
startplek
kerstplaat
slaaptekort
As
ras
Rosa
Laros
Oerals
Oeraals
Boelaars
Bostelaar
Stobbelaar
borstelbaan
WA
anw
Ewan
nawee
Waelen
Salween
leswagen
wagenspel
speelwagen
wespenangel

82. Word pairing
• “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”
•“The quick” + “quick brown” +
“brown fox”, etc
•Create index in memory
•Create phrases starting with last
word, using Markov chain index
•Create indices use different corpora
==> remixing

83. 'bout 'bout it bout it is een sappie
ben dan hij komt vjezze oeh Jappie
boy vaderlay low
sappie opgelucht
plat ja ik heb ondoeltreffender
alle schoon prijs aan t beter zangers
rijk juweel in t hare kostgangers
in liefdes almacht
herdenkt de haardracht
gegeven hun hulde aan windvangers
Source: William Shakespeare (Sonnetten)
Source: Jeugd vanTegenwoordig

84. Formats & Functions
• Different templates for poetry forms Limerick,
Haiku, SMS, Snowball, etc.
• Easily implemented in Python
• Small functions:
• Syllables (language specific)
• Groene Boekje (Dutch Word List)
• Anagram
• Rhyme

85. is de club huilen
lucht kwam ineens changde z'n
holler at ya boy
aan de stervling steeds
aan den gloed en zinneloos
de schuld en voorproeft
Source: William Shakespeare (Sonnetten)
Source: Jeugd vanTegenwoordig

86. Dichtfabriek: conclusions
• Still Proof of Concept
• Real fun to do, very short development time
• Generative Art, Combinational Creativity
• Python is excellent for Creative Coding
• Currently: Dutch only, 100% form, 0% Content
• Many points of extension for future work

87. •Processing, VVVV, Python, etc.
•Music: Chuck, SuperCollider, etc.
•Creative Coding Utrecht
•Creative Coding A’dam
Get Started Today!

88. Maker Culture

89. Questions?
@eelcodenheijer
Tumblr: eelcodenheijer
https://www.behance.net/eelcodenhef78e
http://eelcodenheijer.nl
eelcodenheijer@gmail.com