Ideas and Tools in Material Space - an extended spatial model of creativity

In this paper I propose a spatial framework for thinking about creative processes, both actual and computer modeled, which combines the conceptual dimensions of a work with the implications of the artistic tools we are using and the material in which the work is created. Spatial models of creativity have been presented before. Maybe most well known is Boden's concept of exploration and transformation of spaces [1], and the ideas presented in this paper may be considered an extension of her ideas. The framework combines the relationship between the theoretically possible and the practically possible, the in uence of tools on the creative exploration, what happens when we work with several tools at once and switch between them. It emphasizes the interplay between ideas, tools and material, between the desired outcome and the possible results, and the ambiguities in translating between them. It is based on observation of my own creative work during more than two decades of artistic activities as a composer, sound artist, programmer and improviser. I have consciously observed my own creativity since my early teens (triggered by a copy of a 'creative-enhancing' book I got from my mother), and during the last ten years I have actively tried to model artistic creative processes in software, mostly based on evolutionary algorithms, in parallel with and overlapping my work as a composer. Lately, a number of originally unconnected observations have fallen into place, forming a coherent view of (my) creative process. Hopefully, it is also more generally applicable. The paper is not about the novelty aspect of creativity, and not (so much) about the social and cultural aspects. It concentrates on what goes on in the mind of an artist during the birth and development of an artwork from concept