Distributed Divergent Creativity: Computational Creative Agents at Web Scale

Abstract

Divergence is a multifaceted capability of multifaceted creative individuals. It may be exhibited to different degrees, and along different dimensions, from one individual to another. The same may be true of computational creative agents: Such systems may do more than exhibit differing levels of divergence: They may also implement the mechanics of divergence in very different ways. We argue that creative capabilities such as divergence are best viewed as cognitive services that may be called upon by cognitive agents to complete tasks in ways that may be deemed “original” or to generate products that may be deemed “creative.” We further argue that in a computational embodiment of such an agent, cognitive services are best realized as modular, distributed Web services which hide the complexities of their particular implementations and which can be discovered, reused and composed as desired by other Web-aware systems with diverse creative needs of their own. We describe the workings of one such reusable service for generating divergent categorizations on demand and show how this service can be composed with others to support the generation and rendering of novel metaphors in an autonomous Twitterbot system.