Assignment Descriptions

All written assignments are to be done with a word processor and be neat and professional. Good writing, grammar, punctuation, etc. are important and can affect your grade.

Virtual Intro and Brainstorming

Get yourself invited to the class Virtual Discussion and use it to contribute the following entries: a brief introduction of yourself and your skills that are relevant to our class goals and two or more ideas for a class project.

Computational Model of Creativity

In a couple of pages (typed, 12pt Times Roman, 1-inch margins), produce a high-level computational model of the creative process. You do not need to provide all the details; rather, you should focus on the big picture and the computational aspects of the model, and you should try to produce something that accounts for as much of the "theory" as possible. In class, to date, our readings and discussion have focused, for the most part, on philosophical issues. This assignment is your chance to translate those issues/concepts into something more concrete and computational. In other words, propose a model that accounts for the issues/concepts in a computational way (i.e. tell me *what* you think the model should include and *why* you think that way and *how* you might actually do that computationally).

Slack Journal

On Slack, send me a direct message that includes an accounting of the time you spent outside of class for the previous week, including reading, meeting with your team, project development, etc. Give both a number of hours, and a paragraph description for how those hours were spent.

Project Proposal

Form a small group (2 or 3) with classmates and do some outside reading, thinking, research, etc. and come up with an idea for a creative computational system. Write a page describing your proposal, why it will demonstrate creativity and how you will approach it, including a list of potentially useful resources you've found. We will review these together during our initial group meetings, and we will spend the remainder of the semester refining the ideas and solving problems together.

Group Meeting

These are a chance for your group to briefly meet with me to discuss your progress, challenges you are facing, etc. Please be punctual and come prepared with talking points, questions, etc. Obviously, in addition to these brief meetings with me, you should be meeting regularly as a team outside of class.

Group Battle

These are a chance for your group to meet with another group to foster "interdisciplinary" thinking. One group will begin by briefly explaining their current progress and challenges and then both groups will spend time brainstorming ways to overcome those challenges. Halfway through the class period, you will start over and focus on the second group's progress and challenges. I will wander around and listen in on the various "battles". Please be punctual and come prepared with talking points, questions, etc. for your "opponent" group and take advantage of their time and ideas.

Group Topic Presentation

As a group, choose an important paper in your area that also will be of interest to the broader computational creativity community (check with me to make sure this is a good choice). We will read (in advance) your paper, and you will lead a group discussion during a class period (similar to what we did for the first few classes of the semester). The goal for this assignment is two-fold: to help you better understand your chosen project and to give you an opportunity to teach what you've learned to the class (and to help us see the broader computational creativity implications).

Midterm Presentation and Paper Abstract

Prepare a 10 minute presentation, including slides, preliminary results, demonstrations, etc. that showcase your project in its current state. Argue for why it is/will be creative, and discuss challenges and work yet to be accomplished. Turn in a well-written abstract describing your project. Include a descriptive title, description of the work and intended results (around 200 words), and an annotated bibliography that includes at least five references from the literature (it may also include additional references, online resources, etc.). Please follow this format.

Final Presentation and Paper

Prepare a polished, 20 minute presentation that demonstrates your system and highlights its (contribution to) computational creativity (and possibly more generally to computer science as well). The presentation should include a significant demonstration component (not necessarily live, though that would be awesome) and should be fun, informative and interesting to a broad audience.

Turn in a paper describing your work that is well-written and professionally presented as if you were going to submit it for publication. Use the ICCC style (templates available here) and stick to ICCC conference page limits (8 pages). The paper should tell a compelling story and place your work in the context of the (applicable) field(s) (~1 page), succinctly and accurately explain your approach (~2-3 pages), provide results and analysis (~2-3 pages) and discuss implications, contributions and future work (~1 page). It is very possible that you will find it challenging to accomplish all of this in 8 pages; however, that is what you must do (and the act of doing so will likely result in a better presentation of your work).