Ar T bitration: Human-Machine Interaction in Artistic Domains

Abstract

In this article, the authors analyze the process of human-machine interaction in the context of artistic domains, as a framework for exploring creativity and producing results that could not be obtained without such interaction. "ArTbitration" denotes a process aimed at improving users' aesthetic judgment involving evolutionary computation and other computational intelligence methodologies. The authors interpret it as an interactive, iterative optimization process. They also suggest ArTbitration as an effective way to produce art through the efficient manipulation of information and the proper use of computational creativity to increase the complexity of the results, without neglecting the aesthetic aspects. The article emphasizes the spoken, visual and musical domains, since these are generally characterized by the lack of a systematic way to determine the quality of the result.

Evolution and Complexity

The new sciences of complexity deny determinism and insist on creativity at all levels of the natural world. Concepts introduced by the theory of complexity may be more useful as metaphors than the traditional Newtonian ones [1], leading to models appropriate for describing structures ranging from molecules to organisms, from solitary individuals to colonies. The construction of higher structural levels from existing modules present in hierarchies, and the interaction of previously non-interacting or weakly interacting components of a system, are common mechanisms for a sequential increase in complexity [2].

Humanity constantly seeks to explore new possibilities, concepts and utopias that may lead to new kinds of interaction between humans and between humans and nature. Music and art, for example, change all the time, never remaining static [3]; we can therefore ask, What will be the effect of the information society on our individual creativity in music, the visual arts or poetry [4]? This kind of society has its advantages, although it includes both information and misinformation. The question is, How do we differentiate between them? In the following pages, we discuss several attempts to perform interactive, iterative optimization using evolutionary computation and other computational intelligence methodologies, together with human-machine interaction. When artistic aspects are involved, we refer to attempts to improve aesthetic judgment as ArTbitration.

In the following sections, we present spoken, visual and musical domains of ArTbitration. We then discuss our approach to interactive music composition, called Vox Populi, a hybrid made up of an instrumental and a compositional environment, appropriate for the study of human perception in the musical domain.

ArTbitration: Word Domains

One fine Easter morn, A-ooga and Duhhh, two strong young protohumans of the year 198,016 B.C., are out looking for brightly colored bison eggs. Unbeknownst to them, a ferocious green snaarfbeast, hidden in the limbs of a nearby billaboo tree, is greedily eyeing them and looking forward to a couple of nice, juicy, raw protohuman-burgers (without the bun). The unsuspecting pair are approaching the tree, and as the snaarf-beast tenses up and prepares to leap upon them, A-ooga spies it and begins to yell, "Watch out for antidisestablishmentarianism snaarfbeast!!" But before she has gotten all the way through that slightly awkward definite article, the beast has leapt, and . . . [5]

The two brave proto-language users in this story have become mere nodes in the evolutionary tree, and aside from the fact that their tragic tale would be retold some 200,000 years later in a postscript concerning ergonomics and the evolution of the genetic code, they are ciphers in the vast scheme of things. Moreover, the snaarfbeast has unwittingly done a great favor for users of rival proto-languages: The number of speakers of A-ooga and Duhhh's proto-language has been reduced by two and the relative position of all rival proto-languages has thereby been strengthened.

In this tale, Douglas Hofstadter conceives an idea: efficiency in communication really matters. A language in which "the" and "antidisestablishmentarianism" were reversed might well survive in the world if there were no rival languages competing with it. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with "the" being an obscure word and "antidisestablishmentarianism" being the most common word in...