- Read the other papers from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences volume in 1994.
- Read Chapter 3 of Boden, and other chapters, to pin down Boden's definitions of the two concepts (real creativity and mere novelty) as Bundy has cited them.
- Check my interpretation of modelling vs simulation... when thinking about this paper's comments, I constantly got confused between the two. I need to clarify this in my head.
- Follow up citations of Bundy's work, to see if anyone has actually taken these ideas of the need for complexity measuring and self-reflection in creativity further in a practical way (As of the time of writing, haven't found anything yet... possibly i could?)
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Issues arising from reading Bundy's 1994 paper
Bundy: What is the difference between real creativity and mere novelty?
This is a paper published in 1994 as part of a collection of commentaries on Margaret Boden's 'The Creative Mind' book, which had been published 4 years previously. (At some point I really need to sit down with this entire journal section and read through it, when I know the Boden book better...)
Alan Bundy has seized on two distinct concepts from Boden's book, of 'real creativity' and 'mere novelty', and has critically examined both Boden's viewpoint and other ideas on the distinction between these two.
Boden's definitions of the two, as quoted by Bundy, are:
Real creativity: "mapping, exploration and transformation of conceptual space"
Mere novelty: "Generation of new objects from existing conceptual space"
(I haven't found these exact quotes in the Boden book yet so can't add page numbers yet)
From reading the paper, I think that Bundy's point is that the difference between the two (definition wise) is that real creativity involves some changing of the conceptual space parameters (i.e. the realm of all possible ideas in that domain). So he challenges Boden, saying that real creativity can be present even when new ideas are generated without changing the conceptual space. However I think Boden's definition of real creativity acknowledges this, under the use of the words 'mapping' and exploration'?
This paper does give a very thought-provoking discussion of what is needed to justify labelling something novel as being creative. Bundy suggests that the complexity of new objects being generated is important in how creative they are perceived to be, and that there has to be some kind of self reflection on the part of the creator, to judge the worthiness of such new objects.
Some points for consideration:
Why isn't mere novelty creative? Is this the right distinction to be making? What is creativity if it isn't just mere novelty? (the paper deliberately only hints at an answer to this question rather than attempting to solve it comprehensively; little has been done to follow up Bundy's suggestions). Assuming creativity must incorporate novelty, what must else it have to distinguish itself as definitely creativity rather than just the generation of novel but uncreative ideas?
I can't find the definition of 'real creativity' that Bundy cites, in Boden's book, although I can find the definition of mere novelty easily enough. I would like to see this definition for myself in Boden's own words.
Interesting sentence: '"Real" intelligence appears to arise from the interplay of a number of relatively mundane processes.' (preceeded by: 'it is usually a mistake to regard one aspect of an intellectual process as the key with the others playing only a supporting role')
This sentence makes me think: is Bundy confusing creativity with intelligence in this paper (deliberately or accidentally) - and actually where is the distinction here, the dividing line?or is creativity a sub-part of intelligence? or is creativity = novelty+intelligence? or less guided? more guided?
(but also this sentence links in with some ideas I have had on creativity emerging from concurrent processes, linked to Koestler's bisociation matrices perhaps....)
Is Bundy presenting creativity as intelligent generation of new concepts/ideas? I think he is. Do I agree with this? What are the alternatives? Seems a logical viewpoint to have.
Thursday, 27 March 2008
Library training
I went to a one-to-one training session in the library today, to look at how best to use the online resources. Having quite a sketchy knowledge of this beforehand, it was good to see what was out there - especially for the music side of things which I am rubbish at finding articles about that are relevant to me!
Main resources I should look at for searching:
Scopus, Web of Science (both general coverage)
RILM (music)
IEEE (engineering-related topics)
PsycInfo (psychology)
and MLA for the current linguistics-related project I am looking at
Also JSTOR and ScienceDirect are fairly useful. Google Scholar isn't too bad but it will link to a lot of articles you can't then find online (something that I have found in the past).
Accessing resources (online and print)
For off-campus access, if you access resources through the Electronic library page on the Sussex website, you can log in and then have access to those resources as if you were on campus (this includes having the 'Find-it at Sussex' option to find copies of articles).
One thing I didn't know is that it is possible for us to go into University of Brighton's libraries as well, to a limited extent. So its always worth checking Brighton's catalogue, if Sussex don't have a book/print journal I want (this may be true for me particularly for linguistics material).
Building searches
A good approach is to try several searches, on keywords such as music* and creativ* (using the wildcards for greater coverage), then combine the searches together to narrow them down, rather than doing a new search each time. If I register on Scopus and WOS, then it will remember my search histories and let me save/export searches. I can export Bibtex style references straight from these databases as well. Should help as I have just set up a single Bibtex .bib page for all my references.
To find good keywords, most papers are tagged with author keywords, database-relevant keywords or descriptors. NB to search for a keyword, this will extend the search to title, abstract, author, descriptor etc, so it is best to search by keywords.
Thats the main points of what I got out of today.
(Another useful tip was with the books I have asked the library about ordering - to actually find out whether they've come in or not, and to reserve them for me when they do come in, I should ask at enquiries to reserve it using a manual form rather than online)
Main resources I should look at for searching:
Scopus, Web of Science (both general coverage)
RILM (music)
IEEE (engineering-related topics)
PsycInfo (psychology)
and MLA for the current linguistics-related project I am looking at
Also JSTOR and ScienceDirect are fairly useful. Google Scholar isn't too bad but it will link to a lot of articles you can't then find online (something that I have found in the past).
Accessing resources (online and print)
For off-campus access, if you access resources through the Electronic library page on the Sussex website, you can log in and then have access to those resources as if you were on campus (this includes having the 'Find-it at Sussex' option to find copies of articles).
One thing I didn't know is that it is possible for us to go into University of Brighton's libraries as well, to a limited extent. So its always worth checking Brighton's catalogue, if Sussex don't have a book/print journal I want (this may be true for me particularly for linguistics material).
Building searches
A good approach is to try several searches, on keywords such as music* and creativ* (using the wildcards for greater coverage), then combine the searches together to narrow them down, rather than doing a new search each time. If I register on Scopus and WOS, then it will remember my search histories and let me save/export searches. I can export Bibtex style references straight from these databases as well. Should help as I have just set up a single Bibtex .bib page for all my references.
To find good keywords, most papers are tagged with author keywords, database-relevant keywords or descriptors. NB to search for a keyword, this will extend the search to title, abstract, author, descriptor etc, so it is best to search by keywords.
Thats the main points of what I got out of today.
(Another useful tip was with the books I have asked the library about ordering - to actually find out whether they've come in or not, and to reserve them for me when they do come in, I should ask at enquiries to reserve it using a manual form rather than online)
Current priorities
- Write a 150 word summary of my LCC conference abstract and submit it. By March 31st (show this to Nick before sending).
- Write the full paper for the CIM conference. By April 30th. I need to get a first draft to Alan (my old supervisor and co-author) ASAP
- Prepare an abstract for my talk in Edinburgh. By April 4th (use the abstract from the full paper for CIM). Email title and abstract to Karen Ludke.
- Prepare the Edinburgh talk - need to get my MSc system up and running again and work out how to record it in action? Or find out what facilities are available at Edinburgh for a live demo? (Alan would know)
- Paperwork for annual review - by 16th May
- Book travel and accommodation for Greece conference
- Book train tickets to Edinburgh and check the expenses arrangement with Karen Ludke
- Work on the linguistic creativity project for LCC conference poster
- Book travel and accommodation arrangements for ICMC - we're going to go even if we don't get accepted to present a paper!
Phew that little lot should keep me busy!
catchup
So I have decided to keep this blog going as a form of recording what I do academically. Lets try it for a bit and see how it goes.
Plan is, that when I read new stuff, I will still carry on making rough notes manually but then I will spend a little time after reading, to try and summarise/review what Ive read about. I want to do the same things for particularly useful lectures and seminars etc as well.
Quick update on the AHRC situation - I got my form in, on the last day, so just in time! It is being processed now and apart from one form which is still being filled out at my old university, Edinburgh, I don't have to worry about it anymore. I won't hear the AHRC decision till late August - it will prob be the last funding application I get feedback from.
But one more tiny bit of funding to apply for - I'm going to see if I can get a travel award from AISB for covering the costs for my attending the conference in Greece or for ICMC. Need to join AISB (but it looks quite useful anyway) and find out a little more, but I've got in touch with someone called Therie from Chichester building who is helpful here.
Plan is, that when I read new stuff, I will still carry on making rough notes manually but then I will spend a little time after reading, to try and summarise/review what Ive read about. I want to do the same things for particularly useful lectures and seminars etc as well.
Quick update on the AHRC situation - I got my form in, on the last day, so just in time! It is being processed now and apart from one form which is still being filled out at my old university, Edinburgh, I don't have to worry about it anymore. I won't hear the AHRC decision till late August - it will prob be the last funding application I get feedback from.
But one more tiny bit of funding to apply for - I'm going to see if I can get a travel award from AISB for covering the costs for my attending the conference in Greece or for ICMC. Need to join AISB (but it looks quite useful anyway) and find out a little more, but I've got in touch with someone called Therie from Chichester building who is helpful here.
Thursday, 13 March 2008
nope, it wasn't the final post!
Just wanted to write quickly that:
With the AHRC funding that I am applying for, there is a pre-submission round of selections within the Informatics Dept at Sussex. In fact, there is a cap on the number of applications that Sussex students can submit such that only one student (masters or doctoral) can actually have their application put forward to AHRC for consideration. This is before it even gets considered for funding!
I heard last night that my application for AHRC funding is going to be the application selected by Informatics :D on the proviso that I can get the form back to Informatics in time for it to be processed and sent to Sussex House by 5pm tomorrow. This deadline is something that I think the department itself has just found out about!
At least (with the encouragement of my supervisor to get the form in early) my form is currently in the process of being sent around referees. The strange part of an AHRC application is that I fill in my part of the form, then send a paper and electronic copy to my first referee. Then the first referee adds their reference to the two copies of the form and forwards that onto the second referee. The second referee adds their reference, and then the whole combination is sent onto the department where you are planning to study.
So my overriding concern now is to get that form back from my second referee in Edinburgh - I'm trying to contact him and I'm hoping that he can get it sent on a next-day post... keep your fingers crossed for me!
With the AHRC funding that I am applying for, there is a pre-submission round of selections within the Informatics Dept at Sussex. In fact, there is a cap on the number of applications that Sussex students can submit such that only one student (masters or doctoral) can actually have their application put forward to AHRC for consideration. This is before it even gets considered for funding!
I heard last night that my application for AHRC funding is going to be the application selected by Informatics :D on the proviso that I can get the form back to Informatics in time for it to be processed and sent to Sussex House by 5pm tomorrow. This deadline is something that I think the department itself has just found out about!
At least (with the encouragement of my supervisor to get the form in early) my form is currently in the process of being sent around referees. The strange part of an AHRC application is that I fill in my part of the form, then send a paper and electronic copy to my first referee. Then the first referee adds their reference to the two copies of the form and forwards that onto the second referee. The second referee adds their reference, and then the whole combination is sent onto the department where you are planning to study.
So my overriding concern now is to get that form back from my second referee in Edinburgh - I'm trying to contact him and I'm hoping that he can get it sent on a next-day post... keep your fingers crossed for me!
Tuesday, 11 March 2008
Final post...? Course reflection
This blog has formed part of the assessment for the Advanced Technical Communications course at Sussex university, which I have to take as part of my first year of doctoral study in Informatics. Whether or not I will continue this blog after the course is finished, I am not sure yet. But this will be the final post in the blog that is relevant to the ATC course; it is a reflection on what I feel I have learnt during the course.
There were a number of different modules during the course - I will look at each one individually.
Blog
The purpose of this part of the course was to look at the role of blogs in a technical writing scenarios - something I had never encountered before so this was new information to me. I had previously regarded the role of blogs as a personal diary kept online, which may explain my bias towards keeping the blog as a personal record of thoughts and observations as opposed to a medium for communicating with a peer community. I still think this role of a blog has good value, in terms of self-reflection and recording progress. In the future I may keep a blog-style report of my work, of a more technical nature, although I think the suspicious side of my nature will mean I keep particular details only in offline records to which I can restrict the access. Not that I'm paranoid that people will steal my ideas... but a lot of the time, the information that is most useful for me to consult is the way my ideas progress over time. If I'm cautious of recording the exact details of my ideas, or try to present them in a publicly accessible form, I think I lose some of the usefulness in recording my ideas - some of the value that only becomes apparent over time.
Elevator Pitch
Even though I've only been here for two terms, I am already so used to the question 'So what is your research on?' I've stumbled around with various attempts at answers but never really given much thought to how I should answer this. I guess this is because it is usually friends or casual acquaintances that have asked me about my research so far. Now though, I have been thinking about times when I would really need to be able to present a strong view of my research, for example at conferences etc. So it was really quite useful to give this some thought and think of ways in which I could really make people interested.
I have to say that when asked about my DPhil study now, I still automatically say 'well i'm looking at Musical Creativity' or something similar, before using my prepped elevator pitch descriptions, but actually that seems to get people interested anyway as its quite unusual. But I'm trying to get out of that habit as well, as people get a bit confused at first when I talk about musical creativity. Well I guess my elevator pitch is a work in progress!
Technical posters
For this part of the course (and equally so for the paper writing - especially the abstract/title focus - and for the presentation modules) I had an actual project that I was working on (my voice separation project), that I was focussing on presenting to a peer community. This meant that I got real practical value out of these aspects of the course, in a here-and-now basis, as well as preparing for future occasions.
Although I am not presenting a poster for this voice separation project, the exercise of reducing my (then written and submitted) 4 pages of project paper to a poster format was an interesting process. I cut out so much detail from my poster, but was still guided by the text I had already written. On reflection, if I had produced the poster before the paper, I would have a less clear view of what I was trying to achieve, and the important aspects of my project. However I would probably have been able to represent these aspects in a more intuitive (probably more diagrammatic) format, rather than falling back on summarising the text I had already written.
At the point of producing a poster for other projects though, I think I will have a less defined idea of what the poster content covers (as the work will probably not be a finished and evaluated system, but more likely will be reports on a work in progress and initial results and evaluation). So I will be writing from a slightly different viewpoint. When I was creating this poster, I was still in the mindset of expressing the information about this project in a paper format. So the end result is a poster that I would probably need to change before displaying. This is a shame really as I was quite keen to produce a larger poster after the course conference, for display outside our office.
Seeing as I have had a poster proposal accepted for a conference in Brighton this summer :) , though, I will get plenty of chances to try this poster out again. I think in essence I reduced the information in my poster to the right amount, but tried to express it in the proverbial '1000 words' rather than the 'picture' (maybe 1000 words is an exaggeration!). So I should get that poster on my outside wall after all!
Paper writing
I had done a little study before on how to structure papers, so this part of the course was mostly reinforcing what I had already looked at, but the major point of interest for me here was the deep discussion into abstracts and titles.
Writing abstracts has always been a thing of mystery to me... it was great to have a real structure to follow (I work much better this way, I think!) and to see the exact point of the abstract. As a side point, it was interesting to look at abstracts I personally have found helpful or not helpful, and analyse them according to the exact information they present - this was quite illuminating!
I never really give much thought to the titles of what I write, but I did see in ATC how much rests on having a good title (especially looking at the papers listed for a conference in Music Tech, and judging each paper based on the title. It has had some effect - I have submitted two papers this year, and the first title was a bit poorer than the second (which were written before and after ATC, respectively) - not quite so concise and a bit techy.
1. Artificially Intelligent Accompaniment using Hidden Markov Models to Model Musical Structure.
2. Voice separation in polyphonic music: A data-driven approach.
The part where we looked at peer review papers was also fascinating for me, given that I had actual reviews of my first paper (very very short reviews!) and was glad to see that generally you would get much more feedback than I got!
Presentations
I think I might have missed this part of the course due to writing up my paper for ICMC. Shame, would have been good! But I looked quickly through the slides online before my presentation.
As a side note, I tried something out with my slides for the mini conference - I went to a 'DPhil Skills' workshop presentation about Powerpoint slides which was very dismissive of using bullet points and instead advocated more readable slides (but still not much text - lots of pictures) and also the use of full statements for slide titles instead of short sentence fragments. I thought I'd try this out to some extent in my slides. I didn't get any feedback directly on that (yet...! but maybe I will) but it actually helped me a lot, with the titles, to see exactly the point I was making in that slide, and helped the construction of that slide as well, because everything on that slide had to back up that statement. I think I'll keep that to some extent, although I have to admit that the bullet point style is too easy to sneak back into the slides. I'll compromise slightly there!
Assessment sessions
The mini conference scenario, including the poster session and the series of talks, meant a lot of preparation work that I thankfully could use my ICMC paper for, but I'm glad that I could get the chance to do this mini conference. It was really helpful for simulating how conferences would work, and I feel quite a lot more confident about how things will be in my upcoming conferences now. Especially, the poster session has been demystified somewhat for me.
Overall
This course has been a lot more work than I would like it to have been! But it has been very useful, and I have to admit its been more useful than the previous term's 'Research Skills' course, which was also compulsory for first year DPhils. There are a lot of things about life as a researcher which I was very hazy about, such as what exactly posters were for and how conferences worked, and the whole cyclic nature of getting papers published, and I really felt that these were clarified for me. It was a very good atmosphere in which to ask some questions about these as well - in other arenas you almost feel like you should already know all about conferences etc, without having to ask seemingly 'dumb' questions.... but here I never felt like my questions were too 'dumb'. So overall - a bit invasive in terms of work (which is fair enough I guess for a course that also is a master's course so should have a corresponding workload) but the work was very helpful and worth the effort. Cheers Geraldine!
There were a number of different modules during the course - I will look at each one individually.
Blog
The purpose of this part of the course was to look at the role of blogs in a technical writing scenarios - something I had never encountered before so this was new information to me. I had previously regarded the role of blogs as a personal diary kept online, which may explain my bias towards keeping the blog as a personal record of thoughts and observations as opposed to a medium for communicating with a peer community. I still think this role of a blog has good value, in terms of self-reflection and recording progress. In the future I may keep a blog-style report of my work, of a more technical nature, although I think the suspicious side of my nature will mean I keep particular details only in offline records to which I can restrict the access. Not that I'm paranoid that people will steal my ideas... but a lot of the time, the information that is most useful for me to consult is the way my ideas progress over time. If I'm cautious of recording the exact details of my ideas, or try to present them in a publicly accessible form, I think I lose some of the usefulness in recording my ideas - some of the value that only becomes apparent over time.
Elevator Pitch
Even though I've only been here for two terms, I am already so used to the question 'So what is your research on?' I've stumbled around with various attempts at answers but never really given much thought to how I should answer this. I guess this is because it is usually friends or casual acquaintances that have asked me about my research so far. Now though, I have been thinking about times when I would really need to be able to present a strong view of my research, for example at conferences etc. So it was really quite useful to give this some thought and think of ways in which I could really make people interested.
I have to say that when asked about my DPhil study now, I still automatically say 'well i'm looking at Musical Creativity' or something similar, before using my prepped elevator pitch descriptions, but actually that seems to get people interested anyway as its quite unusual. But I'm trying to get out of that habit as well, as people get a bit confused at first when I talk about musical creativity. Well I guess my elevator pitch is a work in progress!
Technical posters
For this part of the course (and equally so for the paper writing - especially the abstract/title focus - and for the presentation modules) I had an actual project that I was working on (my voice separation project), that I was focussing on presenting to a peer community. This meant that I got real practical value out of these aspects of the course, in a here-and-now basis, as well as preparing for future occasions.
Although I am not presenting a poster for this voice separation project, the exercise of reducing my (then written and submitted) 4 pages of project paper to a poster format was an interesting process. I cut out so much detail from my poster, but was still guided by the text I had already written. On reflection, if I had produced the poster before the paper, I would have a less clear view of what I was trying to achieve, and the important aspects of my project. However I would probably have been able to represent these aspects in a more intuitive (probably more diagrammatic) format, rather than falling back on summarising the text I had already written.
At the point of producing a poster for other projects though, I think I will have a less defined idea of what the poster content covers (as the work will probably not be a finished and evaluated system, but more likely will be reports on a work in progress and initial results and evaluation). So I will be writing from a slightly different viewpoint. When I was creating this poster, I was still in the mindset of expressing the information about this project in a paper format. So the end result is a poster that I would probably need to change before displaying. This is a shame really as I was quite keen to produce a larger poster after the course conference, for display outside our office.
Seeing as I have had a poster proposal accepted for a conference in Brighton this summer :) , though, I will get plenty of chances to try this poster out again. I think in essence I reduced the information in my poster to the right amount, but tried to express it in the proverbial '1000 words' rather than the 'picture' (maybe 1000 words is an exaggeration!). So I should get that poster on my outside wall after all!
Paper writing
I had done a little study before on how to structure papers, so this part of the course was mostly reinforcing what I had already looked at, but the major point of interest for me here was the deep discussion into abstracts and titles.
Writing abstracts has always been a thing of mystery to me... it was great to have a real structure to follow (I work much better this way, I think!) and to see the exact point of the abstract. As a side point, it was interesting to look at abstracts I personally have found helpful or not helpful, and analyse them according to the exact information they present - this was quite illuminating!
I never really give much thought to the titles of what I write, but I did see in ATC how much rests on having a good title (especially looking at the papers listed for a conference in Music Tech, and judging each paper based on the title. It has had some effect - I have submitted two papers this year, and the first title was a bit poorer than the second (which were written before and after ATC, respectively) - not quite so concise and a bit techy.
1. Artificially Intelligent Accompaniment using Hidden Markov Models to Model Musical Structure.
2. Voice separation in polyphonic music: A data-driven approach.
The part where we looked at peer review papers was also fascinating for me, given that I had actual reviews of my first paper (very very short reviews!) and was glad to see that generally you would get much more feedback than I got!
Presentations
I think I might have missed this part of the course due to writing up my paper for ICMC. Shame, would have been good! But I looked quickly through the slides online before my presentation.
As a side note, I tried something out with my slides for the mini conference - I went to a 'DPhil Skills' workshop presentation about Powerpoint slides which was very dismissive of using bullet points and instead advocated more readable slides (but still not much text - lots of pictures) and also the use of full statements for slide titles instead of short sentence fragments. I thought I'd try this out to some extent in my slides. I didn't get any feedback directly on that (yet...! but maybe I will) but it actually helped me a lot, with the titles, to see exactly the point I was making in that slide, and helped the construction of that slide as well, because everything on that slide had to back up that statement. I think I'll keep that to some extent, although I have to admit that the bullet point style is too easy to sneak back into the slides. I'll compromise slightly there!
Assessment sessions
The mini conference scenario, including the poster session and the series of talks, meant a lot of preparation work that I thankfully could use my ICMC paper for, but I'm glad that I could get the chance to do this mini conference. It was really helpful for simulating how conferences would work, and I feel quite a lot more confident about how things will be in my upcoming conferences now. Especially, the poster session has been demystified somewhat for me.
Overall
This course has been a lot more work than I would like it to have been! But it has been very useful, and I have to admit its been more useful than the previous term's 'Research Skills' course, which was also compulsory for first year DPhils. There are a lot of things about life as a researcher which I was very hazy about, such as what exactly posters were for and how conferences worked, and the whole cyclic nature of getting papers published, and I really felt that these were clarified for me. It was a very good atmosphere in which to ask some questions about these as well - in other arenas you almost feel like you should already know all about conferences etc, without having to ask seemingly 'dumb' questions.... but here I never felt like my questions were too 'dumb'. So overall - a bit invasive in terms of work (which is fair enough I guess for a course that also is a master's course so should have a corresponding workload) but the work was very helpful and worth the effort. Cheers Geraldine!
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