A. Phillips, G. Smith, M. Cook, and T. Short define Computational Creativity as “[t]he performance of tasks [by a computer] which, if performed by a human, would be deemed creative”. While the definition is clear, it’s broadness can be problematic since it allows room for bias as to what may be deemed “creative”. Kate Compton attempts to answer this problem by giving a definition for creativity as “any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one”.

Compton’s definition of creativity highlights the component that renders a product Computational Creativity. An example of this would be photobashing, which is the manipulation of an image to create a new one (Phillips et al.). Photobashing is not just used by photographers, but used to create video games and even in academia to represent archeological sites as they may have looked thousands of years ago. This way, there is still a sense of authenticity to what they are doing and it helps the audience visualize how these sites may have looked like in the period. This is one way to educate the public as discussed in Public Humanities.

There are a variety of things you can do which are considered Computational Creativity including creating twitter bots with varying degrees of complexity that will post both sentences and images (Compton) and Generominos which are interactive systems that create an output from the input it receives (Crompton). There is also Twine which enables users to create their “choose-your-own-adventure” game and Inform7 which is a program to make text base games (McCall). Even using Photoshop to edit pictures and turn them into something new can be considered Computational Creativity – a technique called “photobashing” (Gamingarcheo).

Interestingly, there is just as much value associated with the aesthetic aspects of a game as the computational aspects. Take the game ANGELINA for example, which does text analysis, visualization, sound, etc. all at once is not aesthetically pleasing enough to win an award despite the superiority computational activities it is able to achieve (Phillips et al.).

Artificial Intelligence is also an aspect of Computational Creativity. Artificial intelligence is anthropomorphised in order to make it more familiar – there is also a perception that female AI take on stereotypical feminine qualities and male AI masculine qualities (Phillips et al.). This association occurs even in media though these are all done because of cultural implications.