Cohen81.pdf

The introduction to this paper discusses the notion of human creativity, and raises the question of designing a "creative" computer program. Creativity is assumed not to imply the possession of special mental equipment: a theory of creativity should be a theory of intellect which accounts for normal performance and enhanced performance in the same terms. Art-making is described as a form of creative behavior which demonstrates the importance of non-rational features. It is argued that the central feature of "enhanced" intellectual performance is the individual's ability to modify, by the manipulation of internal representations, his/her own mental structures. The processes of representation constrain the actions of the representer, and thus what he/she is capable of representing. Part Two examines the anatomy of Representations in technological terms: the means, the skills, and the theory of operation (of the representation process) which the individual may bring to bear, and the constraints which result. It is proposed that representations represent lower-order representations (internal models), not the external world, and that the making of external objects plays a role in "checking" internal representations of explicit information, is shown as a culturallymodulated phenomenon distinct from evocation, which draws upon more inherently human capacities. Part Three describes a program designed to investigate the interaction of a primitive internal model of world objects with a "representational technology"--the technology by means of which the -ivinternal