Evolving Portrait Painter Programs using Genetic Programming to Explore Computer

Creative systems as opposed to standard evolutionary systems favor exploration over optimization, finding innovative or novel solutions over a preconceived notion of a specific optimal solution. The best creative evolutionary systems only provide tools, allowing the evolutionary process to discover novelty and innovation on its own. We experiment with computer creativity by employing and modifying techniques from evolutionary computation to create a related family of abstract portraits. A new type of Genetic Programming (GP) system is used called Cartesian GP, which uses typical GP Darwinian evolutionary techniques (crossover, mutation, and survival), but has several features that allow the GP system to favor creative solutions over optimized solutions including accommodating for genetic drift where different genotypes map to the same phenotype, visual mapping modules and a knowledge of a painterly color space. This work with its specific goal of evolving portrait painter programs to create a portrait 'sparked' by the famous portrait of Darwin, speaks to the evolutionary processes as well as creativity, as seen by the early results where the evolving programs use recurring, emergent and merged creative strategies to become good abstract portraitists.