Modeling artistic processes using production systems

What are the problems faced by contemporary artists? By what processes do they solve these problems in real-life? This article presents preliminary results of the second phase of an ongoing project seeking to model the cognitive processes involved in a contemporary artistic practice; this project is being conducted within the artistic creativity as situated problem solving approach. Creativity is viewed both as a problem-solving process (Klahr & Simon, 1999) and as a situated process (Nersessian, 2004). The first phase of the project involved a field study of Canadian visual artist Isabelle Hayeur over a sixteen-month period; the second phase, which has just begun, involves the computational modeling of her artistic processes. Building on the analysis of Leclerc and Gosselin (2004), we present a partial but nonetheless substantial computer-based model of the processes involved in this artist’s creative practice.