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NEW GRADUATE COURSE PROPOSAL FORM
Subject: lA T
(max.
4
chars)
Catalog Number: 847
~~------------
Course Title: Metacreation:Endowing Machines with Creative
Behavio~
(max. 80 char.)
Short Title
(appears on transcripts etc.)
Metacreation
(max.
25
char.)
Course Description for Calendar:
(append a course outline as a separate document)
Theory and practice of the metacreation as a contemporary approach to generative art and design that involves
using tools and techniques from artificial intelligence, artificial life, and machine learning to develop software
that is creative on their own. Through the project students will build software that exhibits behaviour that
would be considered creative
if
performed by humans. Students who completed rAT 811 in 2008 or 2009 or
lA T 888
in
2010 are ineligible to take this course for further credit.
Units:
.;;;....-----
3
A vailable Course Components:
(select all that apply)
[8ILecture
DSeminar
DLaboratory
DPracticum
Prerequisites:
(ifany)
_IA_T_8_0_0 __________________________ _
Campus at which course will
be offered:
Surrey
--~-------------------
Estimated Enrolment:
12
The term course will first be offered:
.....:;JSp"-=.nn=. :g,g.,=:20.::..;1:...:1 ______ _
Frequency
of course offering:
yearly
Grading Basis: [8IGraded
Justification:
DSatisfactorylUnsatisfactory DIn
Progress/C~mplete
This is a project-based course to which the usual grading system is well suited.
Resources:
Faculty member(s) who will normally teach this course:
(append in/ormation about their competency to teach the course)
Philippe
Pasguier,
Steve
diPaola
Number of additional faculty members required
in
order to offer this course: _0 ________ _
Additional space required
in
order to offer this course:
(append delilils)
_n_o_n_e __________ _
Additional specialized equipment required
in
order to offer this course:
(append details)
none
Additional Library resources required:
(append details)
Annually $ _0 ____ One-time $ --=-0 __ _
If
additional resources are required to offer this course. the department proposing the course should be prepared to provide
information on the source(s) of those additional resources.
Upon approval of the course proposal. the Dean of Graduate Studies office will consult with the department or school regarding
other course attributes that may be required to enable the proper entry of the new course in the student record system.
SIMON
FRASER
UNIVERSITY
SENATE GRADUATE STUOIES COMMITIEE FORM
212
IAT847 .METACREA TION.RTF
IAT 847-3 Metacreation: endowing machines with creative behaviors
NOTE: Students who completed IA T 811 in 2008 or 2009 or IA T 888 in 2010 are
ineligible
to take this course for further credit.
Course Description
Metacreation is the idea of endowing machines with creative behaviour. Metacreation, as
the contemporary approach to generative art/design, involves using tools and techniques
from artificial intelligence, artificial life and machine learning (themselves inspired by
cognitive and life sciences) to develop softwares that are creative on their own.
In
other
words, a software is a metacreation
if it exhibits behaviors that would be considered
creative
if perfonned by humans.
This graduate course will provide you with the opportunity
to study the theory and
practice
of metacreation. Tools and techniques from artificial intelligence, artificial life
and machine learning will be introduced and exemplified through the study
of existing
metacreations using them. The course will be organized
so that making a project by
exploring metacreation in your area
of research becomes the primary focus. The
interweaving
of related theoretical and practical issues will help you situate your work
within a larger perspective on
art, science and technology.
Pre-requisites and course enrollment
This is an elective course in which all SlAT graduate students can enroll. While it is not a
formal pre-requisite, students will benefit from having completed a foundational
multimedia programming computation course (e.g. java, processing) such
as IAT 800 or
have good knowledge
of at least one prototyping environment (MAXIMSP/TITTER,
Isadora or PureDatalGEM). Students without a strong background in computer science
need
to contact the instructor prior to enrollment.
Topics
- Artificial intelligence (autonomous agents, cognitive and reactive agent
architectures, multi-agent systems, agent communication)
- Artificial life (evolutionary computing, cellular automata, swarm intelligence)
- Machine learning (artificial neural networks, instance-based learning,
reinforcement learning)
- Related issues: theory
of creativity, history of generative art, philosophy of
science/technique (technophobia vs technophilia), philosophy of mind, cognitive
sciences, validation techniques.
1
Outcomes
The goal of this course is to introduce theories and approaches to metacreation, that is,
the design of machines endowed with creative behavior. Each student will exploit some
of the techniques introduced in the course through a project. By doing so, the students
will deepen their understanding of a variety of techniques from the fields of artificial
intelligence, artificial life and machine learning as well as exercise their research skills.
The concrete goal
of the course is to produce a research paper presenting the student's
work (theoretical background, system and/or experiments, results, discussion and related
work and conclusion) that is as ready as possible for submission
in a high profile
conference or journal.
Evaluation and Grading
30% Theoretical research (includes a presentation in class)
30% Project (10% process, 10% result, 10% in-class presentation and demonstration)
30% Research Paper (refining and presenting all of the above)
10% Participation
References
This is a graduate course. In addition to the reference material, students will be
responsible
for finding research papers and texts suitable for the work undertaken.
Art and Science:
Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life, Mitchell Whitelaw, MIT Press, 281 pp., 2004,
ISBN 0-262-23234-0
Information Art: Intersections of Art, Science and Technology, Stephen Wilson, MIT
Press,
2002, 945 pages.
Artificial Life Models in
Software, Andrew Adarnatzky, Maciej Komosinski (Eds.),
2005, Springer, 344 p. ISBN: 978-1-85233-945-6
Creative Evolutionary Systems (With CD-ROM), by David W. Come, Peter J. Bentley,
The Morgan Kaufmann
Series in Artificial Intelligence, 2002, 684 pages, ISBN: 978-
1558606739
Proceedings of the Second Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital
Entertainment International Conference (A1IDE 2006), Edited by John laird and
Jonathan Schaeffer, 172pp, 2007, ISBN 978-1-57735-280-8
Music
and Artificial Intelligence, Christina Anagnostopoulou, Miguel Ferrand, Alan
Smaill (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference, ICMAI 2002,
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, September 12-14,2002, Lecture Notes in Computer Science,
vol. 2445, Springer, 2002, ISBN 3-540-44145-X.
2
Interactive Drama, Art and Artificial Intelligence. Mateas, M. Doctoral Thesis. {JM!
Order Number: AAI3121279, Carnegie mellon University, 2002
Evolutionary Computer Music, Miranda, Eduardo Reck; Biles, John Al (Eds.), 2007,
Springer,
259 p. With CD-ROM., ISBN: 978-1-84628-599-8.
Artificial Life
For Computer Graphics, Terzopoulos, D., (1999), in Communications
of the ACM, Vol 42, No.8, p32-42
Science:
Multiagent Systems: A
Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligence,
Gerhard Weiss, The MIT
Press, 1999, 643
pages, ISBN: 978.0262232036
Machine Learning, Tom Mitchell, McGraw Hill, 1997.
Introduction to Evolutionary Computing, Eiben, A.E. and
J.E. Smith, Springer, Berlin,
2003.
An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms, Mitchell, M., MIT Press, Boston, Mass., 2002.
Computational Intelligence: an introduction, Engelbrecht, A.P., John Wiley
&
Sons,
Chichester, England, 2002.
Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation, Stephen Levy, Random House Value
Publishing, 1994, ISBN: 978-0517118085
Swarm Intelligence, Russell C. Eberhart, Yuhui Shi, James Kennedy, Morgan
Kaufmann; The MIT
Press, 2001, 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0262041942
3
