Wiki source code of 1 Current Work

Last modified by Hal Eden on 2009/04/17 09:31
Content · Comments (0) · Attachments (0) · History · Information
Hide line numbers
  1:  == 1 Current Work ==
  2: 
  3: The purpose of my research is to investigate creativity in virtual environ- 
  4: ments, taking an interdisciplinary approach. From the computing perspec- 
  5: tive, creativity is often cited as one of the ?grand goals? of human achieve- 
  6: ment, and that systems in the ?new computing? movement should all be 
  7: aiming to support (Shneiderman, 2002), while from the psychology perspec- 
  8: tive, creative design has been identi?ed as one of the key challenges for 
  9: theories of human cognition (Simon, 1981). 
 10: \\Many di?erent software packages do aim to support creativity, usually by 
 11: looking at speci?c domains and how to support those domains in a very task- 
 12: oriented manner. However, this is only really appropriate for clearly de?ned 
 13: problems, which is rarely true of most forms of creativity tasks, and most 
 14: software packages only support a relatively limited subset of possible tasks, 
 15: which may not be su?cient to allow creative ?leaps?. In order to support 
 16: creativity e?ectively, the cognitive processes involved must be understood, 
 17: both for the act of creation and for the type of system used. This requires 
 18: not only knowledge of the creative process and how it can be a?ected, but 
 19: also how the system used may a?ect cognitive processes. 
 20: \\As it is, the creative process is not currently well understood, and there 
 21: is still much scope for research in this area. Virtual reality (VR) o?ers a 
 22: very interesting vehicle for studying creativity: it opens up the possibility of 
 23: studying both the mental and physical domains that have traditionally been 
 24: explored by manipulating them in ways that may not otherwise be possible 
 25: while letting us study the theoretical gap between the two that VR creates. \\
 26: 
 27: === 1.1 Creativity in the Mental and Physical Domains ===
 28: 
 29: It has been widely suggested that a creative product is one which is both 
 30: original (or novel in some way) and practical (or ?tting for its purpose) 
 31: (Finke, 1990) (Boden, 2004) (Warr & O?Neill, 2005). In terms of artistic 
 32: creativity, practicality might be assessed in terms of aesthetic values or emo- 
 33: tional properties. However, this is often highly sub jective. For this reason, 
 34: it was considered that the domain of creative design of tangible ?inventions? 
 35: may be most suitable for research at this time. Even for this though, studies 
 36: of how these creative inventions are built are contradictory and inconclusive. 
 37: One in?uential cognitive model of the creative process is the Geneplore 
 38: model (Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992), which proposes that creative design 
 39: consists of two phases: generating ?preinventive structures?, then exploring 
 40: and interpreting them in an iterative process of focusing or expanding on 
 41: concepts, while taking the necessary product constraints into account in 
 42: order to ensure practicality. This model is advantageous as it has no in- 
 43: herent preconceptions or limitations about the type of creativity that it can 
 44: accommodate. The model was informed by mental synthesis experiments 
 45: conducted by Finke, in which participants generated ob jects from three 3D 
 46: shapes, to ?t a category (Finke, 1990). He demonstrated that if partici- 
 47: pants generated structures before receiving categories then creativity scores 
 48: increased, and Finke argues that this ?preinventive phase? forces higher levels 
 49: of exploration due to the structures being free of interpretive bias. 
 50: \\An experiment was run to provide a replication of Finke?s studies with 
 51: the addition of a physical synthesis task, where participants were given phys- 
 52: ical instantiations of the 3D shapes, arguing that the preinventive phase 
 53: should increase creativity irrespective of the type of ob ject generation, if 
 54: the Geneplore model is to hold (McKnight, Ormerod, Sas, & Dix, 2006). 
 55: However, the preinventive phase was not found to increase creativity in ei- 
 56: ther the mental or physical synthesis tasks, which is in contrast with Finke?s 
 57: results and throws the Geneplore model into question. Instead, the preinven- 
 58: tive phase was seen to cause an increase in the originality of the inventions, 
 59: at the cost of practicality. An alternate account for this e?ect would be that 
 60: the preinventive phase poses additional constraints on the task by forcing the 
 61: appearance of the invention, which means that participants are forced to be 
 62: more original in order to make their structures ?t the designated category. 
 63: This may suggest that exploration is not in fact as bene?cial to creativity 
 64: as previously assumed, and constraint may play a much larger role. \\
 65: 
 66: === 1.2 Supporting Creativity in Virtual Reality ===
 67: 
 68: Based on the results of the last experiment, it was planned that experiments 
 69: would then move to virtual environments, where the issue of constraint could 
 70: be further investigated. As a starting point, the constraints of physical laws 
 71: were considered. For example, the e?ects of gravity or solidity were never 
 72: imposed on the mental or physical synthesis tasks since participants were 
 73: told that shapes could be merged, but this would be hard to visualise when 
 74: presented with solid physical shapes, and may also be hard to imagine with 
 75: mental synthesis. However, in a virtual environment, this is easier to allow. 
 76: Pilot studies for the next phase of experiments were conducted using 
 77: environments built in Java3D and VRML, where the solidity and e?ect of 
 78: gravity on the shapes could be manipulated. While these studies appeared to 
 79: indicate an e?ect of the type of constraint, a number of technical issues were 
 80: discovered with using these systems. Therefore it was considered necessary 
 81: to investigate a more robust system for experimentation. 
 82: \\SecondLife (http:~/~/secondlife.com) is an online virtual community built 
 83: by Linden Labs, with the slogan ?Your World. Your Imagination?. Within 
 84: the environment, users (represented by avatars) can navigate a 3D virtual 
 85: world, interacting with each other in a manner similar to many popular 
 86: MMORPGs. However, a distinguishing feature of this environment is that 
 87: it is not, in itself, a game, although many games exist within it; there is no 
 88: overall ?goal?, just as in real life. Instead, users can choose to play games, 
 89: run businesses, socialise or just explore. The in-world currency of ?Linden 
 90: Dollars? has a real economy, and can be converted to and from US dollars, so 
 91: virtual businesses may earn real incomes (approximately L$250 = $1 USD). 
 92: Currently, SecondLife has nearly 2 million users (as of December 2006). 
 93: The most relevant feature of SecondLife, however, is that all features of 
 94: the world are built by its users, and as such depends highly on supporting 
 95: and encouraging creativity. Players have the ability to create any form of 
 96: artifacts that they wish, such as buildings, vehicles, furniture or toys, which 
 97: can then have scripts added to them to allow animations or behaviours. 
 98: These artifacts are built using primitive 3D shapes (called ?prims?), such as 
 99: spheres, cones, cubes and cylinders, which can be manipulated in a variety 
100: of ways (e.g. rotating, resizing, moving, cutting). The system uses the Ha- 
101: vok physics engine, and users can make shapes ?physical? (i.e. they can be 
102: pushed and a?ected by gravity) or ?phantom? (where they can pass through 
103: other ob jects). They can choose from a variety of materials (e.g. wood, 
104: metal, glass, rubber) or apply their own textures. This focus on creativ- 
105: ity by synthesis of generic 3D shapes makes SecondLife an ideal platform 
106: for studying creativity using our existing methods, while also giving the 
107: opportunity to evaluate a system with a large existing userbase. 
108: \\It is hoped that, once these experiments are run, it will be possible 
109: to then investigate speci?c issues in more depth, with a view to building a 
110: toolkit for supporting creativity e?ectively by allowing the most appropriate 
111: levels of exploration or constraints. \\
112: 
113: == References ==
114: 
115: Boden, M. (2004). The creative mind: Myths and mechanisms. London: 
116: Routledge. 
117: Finke, R. (1990). Creative imagery: Discoveries and inventions in visuali- 
118: sation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 
119: Finke, R., Ward, T., & Smith, S. (1992). Creative cognition theory, research 
120: and application. Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 
121: McKnight, L., Ormerod, T. C., Sas, C., & Dix, A. (2006). As useful as a 
122: bicycle to a ?sh: exploration versus constraint in creativity. In Pro- 
123: ceedings of the cognitive science society conference. Montreal, Canada: 
124: Cognitive Science Society. 
125: Shneiderman, B. (2002). Leonardo?s laptop: Human needs and the new 
126: computing technologies. Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 
127: Simon, H. A. (1981). The sciences of the arti?cial (2nd ed.). Cambridge 
128: MA: MIT Press. 
129: Warr, A., & O?Neill, E. (2005). Understanding design as a social creative 
130: process. In Proceedings of the 5th conference on creativity & cognition 
131: (p. 118-127). New York: ACM Press. 
132: \\
Wiki source code of 1 Current Work

Quick Links

My Recent Modifications
