Pilot: Distributed Creative Cognition in Choreography

科学和计算机科学的思想史过分强调了思想的命题、符号和语言方面;没有解释思想如何发生在非语言系统中，更接近我们的感官，并且经常与社会技术世界中的非语言过程相协调。本研究的目的是开发一个新的计算模型的基础上的创造力的实验和民族志研究的舞蹈发明。核心问题是由编舞者和舞者组成的分布式系统如何能够如此多产。在所有的设计和研究工作中，创造性不可避免地要用到非命题思维。因此，必须加深我们对这一不甚了解的进程的了解。研究编舞制作的另一个原因是，它类似于大型设计和研究项目，需要数周或数月的时间，它涉及多方合作，一个新的制作可能很容易花费100万美元。在群体层面上，这种动态与其他大型设计作品类似。被研究的编舞者已经开发出了一些技术，可以使创造过程的生成阶段保持更长的时间，并在舞者之间保持实质性的差异，尽管他们迫切需要群体思考和趋同行为。他还开发了利用自己和舞者感觉系统编码语言的技术，以创造新的运动理念。在这个项目中，将收集可共享的人种学和实验数据，以拓宽新的计算理论的发展：1）分布式创造力：分布式组件如何工作以生成创造性产品-团队成员利用资源交互式发明新概念和元素的机制，然后将事物结构化为连贯的产品; 2）分布式认知：如何利用认知的具体方面来产生新的“思想”-设计师，工程师，艺术家，舞蹈家和科学家非命题地思考的机制，使用他们自己的感觉系统的一部分作为模拟系统，并在舞蹈的情况下，使用自己（和他人）的身体作为身体素描的积极工具。对这两个过程的深入研究直接关系到开发新的创造力理论模型以及培养和奖励创造力的研究和教育新模型的目标。这一理论将创造力从一个头脑内部的过程重新定位为一个涉及资源和其他人的更具社会技术性的过程;它认识到身体和感觉运动系统--非语言的，也许是亚理性的元素--在创造性认知中发挥的重要作用。

The intellectual history of science and computer science has placed undue weight on the propositional, symbolic and linguistic side of thought; leaving unexplained how thought can occur in non-verbal systems, based closer to our senses, and often coordinated with non-verbal processes in the socio-technical world. The goal of this study is to develop a new computational model of creativity based on an experimental and ethnographic study of choreographic invention. The core question is how the distributed system consisting of choreographer and dancers are able to be so generative. In all design and research work, creativity inevitably makes important use of non-propositional thinking. It is important, therefore, to deepen our insight in this ill-understood process. A further reason to study choreographic production is that it resembles large design and research projects in taking place over many weeks or months, it involves the collaboration of multiple parties, and a new production may easily cost a million dollars. At a group level the dynamics are similar to other large design efforts.The choreographer being studied has developed techniques for keeping the generative phase of the creative process open longer and for maintaining substantial variance among the dancers despite the urge for group think and convergent behavior. He has also developed techniques for exploiting the coding language of sensory systems, of both himself and his dancers, to create new movement ideas. In this project shareable ethnographic and experimental data will be gathered that broadens the development of new computational theories about: 1) Distributed creativity: how the distributed components work to generate creative product - the mechanisms by which team members harness resources to interactively invent new concepts and elements, and then structure things into a coherent product; and 2) Embodied cognition: how the embodied aspect of cognition is harnessed to generate new 'thought' - the mechanisms by which designers, engineers, artists, dancers, and scientists think non-propositionally, using parts of their own sensory systems as simulation systems, and in the case of dance, using their own (and other's) bodies as active tools for physical sketching. The close study of both of these processes bears directly on the goals of developing new theoretical models of creativity and new models for research and education that will foster and reward creativity. The theory relocates creativity from a within-the-mind process to a more socio-technical process involving resources and other people; and it recognizes the important role that bodies and sensori-motor systems - both non-verbal and perhaps sub-rational elements - play in creative cognition.