Modes for Creative Human-Computer Collaboration: Alternating and Task-Divided Co-Creativity

The analysis of human-computer co-creative systems in current literature is focused on a human perspective, highlighting the benefits of co-creative systems for human users. This study paper examines different styles of human-computer co-creation from a more computational perspective, presenting new concepts for analysis of computational agents in human-computer co-creation. Our perspective is based on Wiggins’ formalization
of creativity as a search. We formalize for
co-creative scenarios involving an alternating, iterative approach to co-creation, which we call alternating co-creativity and briefly discuss its non-alternating counterpart, task-divided co-creativity. With focus on alternating co-creativity, we analyze the co-creative process and discuss new modes and roles for the creative agents within it. Finally, we illustrate our theoretical findings in the context of current co-creative systems and discuss their relation to the roles and expectations presented in current literature.