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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $35.95

Format:
Paperback
272 pp.
138 mm x 216 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199659395

Publication date:
November 2012

Imprint: OUP UK


Creativity and Art

Three Roads to Surprise

Margaret A. Boden

Margaret Boden presents a series of essays in which she explores the nature of creativity in a wide range of art forms. Creativity in general is the generation of novel, surprising, and valuable ideas (conceptual, theoretical, musical, literary, or visual). Boden identifies three forms of creativity: combinational, exploratory, and transformational. These elicit differing forms of surprise, and are defined by the different kinds of psychological process that generate the new ideas. Boden examines creativity not only in traditional fine art, but also in craftworks, and some less orthodox approaches - namely, conceptual art and several types of computer art. Her Introduction draws out the conceptual links between the various case-studies, showing how they express a coherent view of creativity in art.

Readership : Scholars and advanced students of philosophy, psychology, and theory of art.

Reviews

  • Review from previous edition: "brimming with interesting ideas and fascinating examples, presented in a clear, lively, and engaging fashion. Boden's book is essential reading for anyone interested in creativity in art or in computer art, and it deserves to be widely read and admired."

    --British Journal of Aesthetics

Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. Creativity in a Nutshell
3. Are Autodidacts Creative?
4. Crafts, Perception, and the Possibilities of the Body
5. Creativity and Conceptual Art
6. Personal Signatures in Art
7. What is Generative Art?
8. Agents and Creativity
9. Autonomy, Integrity, and Computer Art
10. Authenticity and Computer Art
11. Aesthetics and Interactive Art
12. Is Metabolism Necessary?
Index

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Margaret A. Boden is Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex. She is a Fellow (and past Vice-President) of the British Academy, and of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (and its British and European equivalents), and a member of the Academia Europaea. In 2002 she was awarded an OBE for services to Cognitive Science, and she holds a Cambridge ScD as well as honorary doctorates from Bristol, Sussex, and the Open University. Educated at Cambridge and Harvard, her earlier degrees were in medical sciences, philosophy, and psychology.

Making Sense - Margot Northey and Joan McKibbin

Special Features

  • Boden is one of the world's most eminent cognitive scientists.
  • Ground-breaking interdisciplinary essays.
  • Follow-up to Boden's classic 1990 book The Creative Mind, which pioneered the academic study of creativity.