Definition Of Creativity Research Articles

Redefining Creativity in the Era of AI? Perspectives of Computer Scientists and New Media Artists

ABSTRACT Artificial intelligence (AI) has breached creativity research. The advancements of creative AI systems dispute the common definitions of creativity that have traditionally focused on five elements: actor, process, outcome, domain, and space. Moreover, creative workers, such as scientists and artists, increasingly use AI in their creative processes, and the concept of co-creativity has emerged to describe blended human–AI creativity. These issues evoke the question of whether creativity requires redefinition in the era of AI. Currently, co-creativity is mostly studied within the framework of computer science in pre-organized laboratory settings. This study contributes from a human scientific perspective with 52 interviews of Finland-based computer scientists and new media artists who use AI in their work. The results suggest scientists and artists use similar elements to define creativity. However, the role of AI differs between the scientific and artistic creative processes. Scientists need AI to produce accurate and trustworthy outcomes, whereas artists use AI to explore and play. Unlike the scientists, some artists also considered their work with AI co-creative. We suggest that co-creativity can explain the contemporary creative processes in the era of AI and should be the focal point of future creativity research.

Capturing the spark: PISA, twenty-first century skills and the reconstruction of creativity

ABSTRACT Creativity has fascinated scholars for generations, and its identification as one of the key ‘twenty-first century skills' necessary for economic growth has led to renewed interest. This creates two challenges for the OECD: its flagship Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) does not directly measure creativity. Secondly, the increased importance attached to creativity has highlighted claims that high performers on PISA are largely nations stereotyped as lacking creativity. This challenges PISA's self-proclaimed status as the premier global benchmark for evaluating and comparing the quality of school systems and weakens its capacity to deliver its core mission; to identify ‘best practices' which ensure economic prosperity. We explore these challenges and examine both how the OECD has responded to them and is moving to include creativity in PISA 2022. We argue that, while a precise definition of creativity has defied scholars for centuries, the indications are that the OECD's metric will focus on a narrow, convergent and easily-measured conception associated with cognitive competencies and linked to enhancing human capital. In this way, the ‘messiness’ around the polysemic concept will be simultaneously both exploited and threatened, as new, measurable versions displace alternatives.

What does ‘occupancy’ mean in passive acoustic surveys?

Occupancy modelling is an increasingly common framework for analysing acoustic data to study the variation in populations through space and time, but different survey designs endow survey locations with varying degrees of biological meaning. Recording units may be preferentially deployed in areas known to be important to a species, which implies an ‘area of occupancy’ conception of a species range, or recording units may be randomly deployed without knowledge of focal species space‐use (e.g. a survey grid), which implies an ‘extent of occurrence’ conception of a species range. Preferential sampling requires substantial pre‐survey information (e.g. the location of focal species territories) but leads to intuitive parameter interpretation and greater precision; vastly greater survey coverage is attainable with random sampling, but the resulting data merit careful post‐processing to achieve precise, ecologically meaningful results. Importantly, occupancy, detection, extinction and colonization estimates are incomparable between study designs. However, an understanding of focal species movement and vocal behaviour can inform the development of creative definitions of acoustic detections – and thus site occupancy – which may help bring the ecological realism of preferential sampling to the data yielded by the more scalable random sampling approach. Understanding the implications of study design choices on parameter interpretation is a fundamental aspect of basic ecological inference and endangered species monitoring.

In the eye of the beholder: A viewer-defined conception of online visual creativity

Despite substantial interest in developing theoretical models and technology for creativity enhancement, existing creativity research across various fields lacks a user-centered definition of creativity that can be operationalized in today’s digital spaces. To address this, we conducted a mixed-methods longitudinal research on a study website mirroring content from Bēhance, a popular online platform for creatives. Specifically, we examined how content creators and consumers explored and reflected on online creative content through textual, visual, quantitative, and behavioral data. Analyzing and triangulating these multiple data streams, we conceptualize creativity from the perspectives of its genuine “users,” the viewers. Collectively, we highlight (1) constructs of creativity that have not been emphasized in the existing literature, (2) the impact of users’ roles on content exploration and conception of creativity, and (3) the difference between machine and human users’ perception of creative content. We discuss theoretical and practical implications accordingly.

Positive Creativity and the Intentions, Discretion, Problem Finding, and Divergent Thinking That Support It Can Be Encouraged in the Classroom

This article begins by presenting a definition of positive creativity. This definition is based in part on the standard view of creativity, which points to originality and effectiveness. A brief discussion of the distinction between benevolent creativity and malevolent creativity indicates that intentions should also be required of positive creativity. Intentions may seem like difficult things to monitor in the classroom, but several useful methods are described herein. The suggestions that are offered here to support positive creativity involve divergent thinking and decision making. The most novel claim in this article is that positive creativity may involve not just problem solving but also problem finding. A second important claim is that educators must be prepared to take the good with the bad. More specifically, when creativity is encouraged, students are likely to think in truly divergent directions, which means they may offer negative as well as positive ideas. Educators should be prepared for ideas that they themselves do not understand. Practical suggestions are offered, including the recommendation that educators should encourage careful decision-making about what constitutes a worthwhile problem (as well as how to solve such problems in a creative fashion). Quite a few instances of malevolence take the form of pseudo-problems. These must be recognized as such and attention must be directed instead to the significant problems that do plague society, such as the climate crisis, the protection of voting rights, and racial discrimination. Positive creativity is needed now more than ever before.

Empathetic creativity for frontline employees in the age of service robots: conceptualization and scale development

PurposeWhile robots have increasingly threatened frontline employees’ (FLEs) future employment by taking over more mechanical and analytical intelligence tasks, they are still unable to “experience” and “feel” to occupy empathetic intelligence tasks that can be handled better by FLEs. This study, therefore, aims to empirically develop and validate a scale measuring the new so-called empathetic creativity as being creative in practicing and performing empathetically intelligent skills during service encounters.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a multistage design to develop the scale. Phase 1 combines a literature review with text mining from 3,737 service robots-related YouTube comments to generate 16 items capturing this new construct. Phase 2 assesses both face and content validity of those items, while Phase 3 recruits Prolific FLEs sample to evaluate construct validity. Phase 4 checks this construct’s nomological validity using PLS-SEM and Phase 5 experiments dedicated effort (vs natural talent) as an effective approach to foster FLEs’ perceived empathetic creativity.FindingsThe final scale is comprised of 13 refined items that capture three dimensions (social, interactive and emotional) of empathetic creativity. This research provides timely implications to help FLEs in high-contact services stay competitive.Originality/valueThis study introduces the new construct of empathetic creativity, which goes beyond the traditional definition of creativity in services and highlights the importance of empathetic intelligence for FLEs in future employment. This study also develops a multi-item scale to measure this construct, which can be applied to future service management research.

The Blind-Variation and Selective-Retention Theory of Creativity: Recent Developments and Current Status of BVSR

ABSTRACT This article provides an update on the blind-variation and selective-retention theory of creativity (BVSR), beginning with an overview of its historical development. That brief narrative is then followed by a more extensive summary of recent enhancements in BVSR’s conceptual foundations, including formal definitions of creative, sighted, and blind variations. These enhancements show that BVSR follows as a direct corollary of the three-criterion definition of personal creativity (i.e., the multiplicative function of originality, utility, and surprise). After treating the various types of BVSR as well as the diverse processes and procedures that can generate blind variations, discussion turns to a concise treatment of BVSR’s research implications, which entail both theoretical extensions and empirical investigations. The article closes with an evaluation of the theory’s current status. Whatever BVSR’s limitations, it still captures an essential feature of creativity that is not sufficiently treated by any theoretical alternatives.

The Dynamic Creativity Framework

Abstract. The dynamic creativity framework (DCF) represents a new theoretical perspective for studying the creativity construct. This framework is based on the dynamic definition of creativity, and it has both theoretical and empirical implications. From a theoretical point of view, we review the characteristics of the dynamic creative process and its extension into the dynamic universal creative process, encompassing creativity at different layers of complexity. We discuss the key concept of creative potential, considering individual, sociocultural, and material viewpoints, and we show how the DCF is instrumental in clarifying the relationship between creativity and intelligence, between creativity and anticipation, as well as in introducing the concept of ‘organic creativity’. From the empirical perspective, we focus on the dynamic creative process broken down into four phases: i) drive, ii) information, iii) idea generation, iv) idea evaluation. We review results obtained through investigations accounting for the dynamic interplay between emotional and cognitive components defining creative performance for each. Experiments were conducted to measure the role of emotions and attention in driving the dynamic process, considering the processing of apparently irrelevant information and the interaction between idea generation and idea evaluation, always taking into account individual differences as measured through personality traits, performance variables, or lifetime achievement. Neurophysiological evidence is considered in discussing dynamic effects in divergent thinking, such as the serial order effect, as well as the possibility to enhance creative potential through neurofeedback. Finally, we report on the effects of different environments on the creative process, highlighting the dynamics produced by context-embeddedness.

ARTIST AND PARTICIPANT COLLABORATION IN INTERDISCIPLINARY INTERACTIVE ART ACTIVITIES

In this study, definition aesthetic and roles of artist and audience/participant in interactive art, requiring interdisciplinary methods and cooperation have been examined. In this context publications such as books, articles and papers related to interactive art, which is associated with many sub-titles such as performance art and digital art have been searched. The findings have been interpreted through performances, installations, digital art and game examples since the 2000s. Interactive art encompasses incomplete artistic forms, interdisciplinarity, society, communication, the environment and new media technologies. In interactive art, open to changeable meanings with the influence of the participant, a human-centered design planner has been mentioned instead of the genius of the artist. However, in interactive art, the artist plans what the participant perceives and reacts to. This plan is made with interdisciplinary cooperation and shows uncertain formations with the contribution of the participant. The definitions of creativity, art, aesthetics of art and the artist have been deconstructed and have gained a universal, fluid and indefinite quality. In interactive art, which includes interdisciplinarity, society, communication and the environment, incomplete artistic forms and human-centered design planner open to changeable meanings with the influence of the participant, rather than the genius of the artist, have been mentioned.

Missing links: What is missing from definitions of creativity?

Creativity sometimes has been viewed as fixed or absolutist over time and space and other times has been viewed as flexible or relativistic over time and space. The psychometric view has tended toward the absolutist model, the sociocultural view toward the relativistic model. It is proposed that these two views roughly represent a thesis and an antithesis, and that a synthesis with both absolutist and relativistic elements may best capture the nature of creative enterprise. Four models of the composition of creativity and its manifestations are proposed that vary what is fixed and what is variable across time and space.

Integrated Constraints in Creativity: Foundations for a Unifying Model

Despite their negative connotation, and the pervasiveness of blue-sky, outside-the-box thinking metaphors, constraints are at the heart of creativity. Using a multidisciplinary approach, as part of the Integrated Constraints in Creativity (IConIC) model, I propose that creative outcomes emerge from the successful leveraging of different types of constraints. I introduce a new, constraint-based definition of creativity, grounded in categorization theory, and parsimonious taxonomies of constraints based on which I outline testable predictions and corroborating evidence. I argue that constraints differ in terms of their flexibility (fixed, faux-fixed, or flexible) and functions (exclusionary or focusing), and in terms of whether they apply to the problem search time or the problem search space. Within the search space, constraints can refer to specific concepts or categories. I also advance a distinction between creativity maximizers and satisficers as a function of creativity goals, semantic networks, expertise, and the new constructs of constraint leveraging power and constraint leveraging mindset, that help to explain differences in successful integration of constraints for creativity and creative achievement.

Worldmaking and the ethnographic possibilities for an abolitionist anthropology

This essay is a commentary on Dorinne Kondo’s Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity. I consider how Kondo’s definition of worldmaking and reparative creativity can be useful concepts for anthropologists contending with the ongoing debate on anthropology’s colonial roots, postcolonial anxieties, and the abolition of the discipline. D. Soyini Madison and Erin Manning in dialog with Kondo provide a generative space to reflect on worldmaking as an anthropological endeavor, or anthropology as an act of worldmaking.

The Importance of Play in Middle School Mathematics

Using question 28 from the May Problems to Ponder in volume 114, the author and her seventh- and eighth-grade students launched into a discussion of creativity, linearity, piecewise, and recursive definitions of functions. This pattern to ponder provided rich mathematical opportunities for all students in my middle school classroom.

This Is Not Reality (Ceci n'est pas la réalité): Capturing the Imagination of the People Creativity, the Chinese Subaltern, and Documentary Storytelling

How has documentary(re)presented subaltern creativity? Focusing on post-socialist, globalizing China, I examine documentary narratives by and about the creative subaltern originating from Chinese “cool cities” and expanding in the virtual space of global digital media. In these narratives, the creative subaltern has appeared obliquely, tangential to other narratives, subordinate to internationally recognized artists, or with a more central role, as the author or the protagonist of documentary films. I analyze these narratives’ entanglement with elitist definitions of creativity, the representation of subaltern reality, the expression of subjectivity, and the tension between the political and the personal. I argue that documentary has played an important albeit ambiguous role—provocative and empowering, but also, at times, formulaic and constricting—in shaping the discourse on the subaltern as a creative subject, by amplifying creativity’s indexicality to the real and obfuscating its imaginative quality and its ambition of breaking free from the real. Reflecting on the contemporary relevance of the Free Cinema movement’s advocacy for a subjective, personal approach to capturing the “imagination of the people” and exploration of lyric realism in documentary filmmaking, I propose that documentary can and should dare to “make poetry.” Forms of documentary expressivity such as poetic, not plot-driven narratives can reconcile imagination with reality and offer alternative, more appropriate means of capturing the complexity, heterogeneity, and contradictoriness of the subaltern condition, and for subaltern creativity to be expressed, appreciated, and affirmed.

Kūrybiškumo sampratų klasifikacija ir kūrybiškumo sąvokos apibrėžtis

Kūrybiškumo sampratų klasifikacija ir kūrybiškumo sąvokos apibrėžtis

Creativity in German Science Education in Elementary Schools: Preservice Teachers’ Perspective on Whether It Is Essential, Possible or Completely Unnecessary

Creativity is one of the key qualifications of the 21st century. Despite this importance, the topic plays a subordinate role in school and teacher training. The article will explore the question of what understanding and values prospective teachers have of creativity in science education. After the relevance of creativity for science education in elementary school is presented, possible definitions of creativity and divergent thinking are shown in the theoretical framework. Based on this, creativity in education and especially in science education in elementary school will be presented. This leads to the following questions: RQ1: What do preservice teachers of science education in elementary school understand by creativity? RQ2: How much relevance do preservice teachers of science education in elementary school attach to creativity for science education in elementary school? RQ3: What are preservice teachers’ views on the influence of different factors on the development of creativity and on the promotion of creativity in science education in elementary school? Preservice teachers of science education in elementary school (N = 131) from the states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany were surveyed. The respondents consider creativity to be important for learning in science education at elementary school. They also view creativity important not only for learning in a school context, as well as its high value in professional life in the future. Overall, the findings show that professional experience has no influence on opinions about creativity in science teaching in elementary school. Preservice teachers from the state of Lower Saxony have a somewhat more positive attitude towards the topic of creativity in science education in elementary school, although it must be said that the respondents from North Rhine-Westphalia also attach great relevance to the topic.

Naturalist Methods in the Sociology of Creation: The Case Against Reductionism

The Sociology of Culture has much to say when it comes to the ever-changing general consensus on what constitutes legitimate culture and definitions of creativity. The naturalistic studieson cognition in social and cognitive sciences show this empirically (Bourdieu, 1979: Becker, 1982, 2002; Sennett, 2012; Author, 2014). Creative cognition is part of an institutional context. However, the influential culturalist branch of cognitive sociology (CCS) reduces creativity toa cognitivist psychological level (Lizardo and Strand, 2010). We start from the conjecture that the Sociology of Culture can draw on the naturalistic paradigm of cognition to explain creativity without falling into reductionist or atomist positions. The authors take the diversityof theoretical-empirical proposals into account in identifying the starting points for focusing the debate at both the macro and micro levels. The body of the article comprises a literature review which, while not exhaustive, offers a full picture of the pragmatic and integrated models of creativity. The studies analysed present inter-subjective processes of creationand the transmission of variable legitimate criteria concerning cultural consumption such as categorisations, evaluations and aesthetic judgments. The sociological perspective offers scope for strengthening critical tools for examining creativity.

Searching for creativity in the Portuguese preschool and basic education curricula

AbstractCreativity has become an essential curriculum competence, playing a pivotal role in the successful response to the ever‐changing demands of contemporary society. Yet, its complex, dynamic, and multifaceted nature seem conflicted with the predominant quantitative and easy‐to‐replicate curricular goals, resulting in potential incongruence between educational aims, pedagogical activities, and students' creativity development. Aiming to contribute to this debate, we designed a qualitative study, based on a documentary analysis of the Portuguese preschool and basic education‐intended curricula (legislation, legal norms, guidelines, programs, opinions, and recommendations). From an initial set of 194 documents, 20 complied with our selection criteria. Key findings underline the difficulties in outlining a clear and comprehensive definition of creativity as a distinctive dimension of psychological development, with consequences in how creativity‐focused pedagogical activities are applied within the classroom. Although recent educational reforms have attempted to overcome these limitations, they appear restricted to arts and sports subjects. Our results highlight the need to develop curricula anchored in an approach to creativity as a unique opportunity for psychological development. By intentionally promoting creativity in the curriculum, students' sense of agency, identity, self‐knowledge, and determination can be engaged, ultimately enhancing the underlying complexity of their socio‐cognitive emotional structures.

Gender perspectives on professional and everyday creativities: introduction to the special issue

ABSTRACT Over the last two decades, theoretical discussions around creativity have turned around addressing existing dichotomies in its conceptualization such as professional/everyday and public/private, to mention the two most relevant to the theme of this special issue. Cultural studies have been critical of approaching creativity in terms of individual talent and the elite (‘creative class’), in economic terms (‘creative industries’) or in terms of exclusive locations (‘creative city’). In addition, scholars within gender studies have pointed out that definitions of creativity tend to exclude activities typically practised by women. Some of the most forceful rearticulations of creativity have drawn on Raymond Williams's notion of ‘common culture’ and Michel de Certeau's theorization of ‘practices of everyday life’ to look for creative practices beyond the economic context and instead emphasize community-based aspects of creativity, its cultural specificity and quotidian locations (‘vernacular creativity’). Interest in the communicative and social dimensions of creativity has also been fuelled by technological advances and the blurring of the boundaries between producers and consumers of new media (‘convergent culture’). This special issue aims to examine current debates on creativity explicitly from the perspective of gender and to enrich our understanding of gender-based creative practice with new areas and reconfigurations of meaning-making. The special issue is divided into two parts or ‘clusters’. The first cluster of articles addresses the divides between the professional/amateur and economic/non-economic gain, looking in turn at professional, convergent and everyday creativities. Central to the articles in the second cluster are the concepts of connecting either with the self or with a community, often by means of improvisation forced by circumstances and/or by the crafting of identity as a creative practice. Additionally, the first cluster is followed by an ‘exhibition’ of the work by the Irish artist Jennifer Walshe, whose themes resonate in various ways across the two clusters.

Creative Social Potential of Digital Society

In the article, the authors consider the phenomenon of creativity, creativity as a demanded competence in contemporary society. Artists, poets, composers, musicians, carriers of the so-called fine art creativity, have always been in demand. In the “fast” digital world, creativity takes on new characteristics, turns into a mass-market productive force. The public demand for creativity and the supply for this characteristic are undergoing noticeable changes now.Creativity has now become a demanded competence that can bring high income to its owners. The authors analyze the influence of common social institutions of socialization on the development of creativity. The article provides a definition of individual and social creativity, structuring the sociological approaches available in world science to the study of creativity and its nature. The authors introduce a new term — paracreativity and reveal its features.The authors come to the conclusion that society, by creating and maintaining social norms, aimed at developing inner freedom and creativity, contributes to the formation of happier social groups and thus individuals, where each individual has created conditions for the disclosure and realization of his creative potential for the benefit of himself and a large or small society, depending on the scale of the activity. Meanwhile, in the digital world, the creator himself regulates the scale of his activities, using/neglecting social networks.