Special Issue: Spotlight on 4E Cognition Research in Mexico - Article

Adaptive Behavior
2018, Vol. 26(5) 239–256
Ó The Author(s) 2018
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creativity from a nonanthropocentric

approach

Nuria Valverde-Pérez1 and Santiago Negrete-Yankelevich2

Abstract
This article proposes a philosophical foundation for a new understanding of natural and artificial creativity based on a
notion of relational creativity that encompasses both human and nonhuman creativity. We combine the inspiration from
computational creativity with proposals from philosophy of technology and philosophy of organisms and discuss the ideas
presented through an imaginary scenario based on the interaction between a creative machine and a locked-in syndrome
patient. By doing so, we attempt to discuss why it is valuable to incorporate Gilbert Simondon’s notions of autonomy,
integration, and amplification, as creativity features that can be candidates to substitute categories as hard to assess as
novelty, surprise, and value.

Keywords
Creativity, individuation, nonhuman agency, computational creativity, Simondon

Handling Editor: Ximena González-Grandon, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico

1. Introduction: why a
nonanthropocentric approach to
creativity?
The development of artificial intelligence (AI) has
offered many opportunities to either reify or transform
the way we think about human cognitive capabilities.
Particular attention has been paid to creativity, espe-
cially by the field of computational creativity (CC),
which aims at both studying human creativity and
building systems that perform in such a way as to be
considered creative. In recent years, many CC scholars
have turned from a classic individualistic and cognitive
model of creativity (Boden, 2004; Csikszentmihalyi,
1996) toward a model based on social and collective
creativity (Bown, 2009, 2015; Gómez de Silva Garza &
Gero, 2010; Maher, 2010, 2012; Negrete & Morales,
2014; Sawyer, 2003, 2006) as an alternative to the clas-
sical model. One advantage of these new approaches is
that they are changing the answer to the question about
who the subject or performer is in the creative process
and, hence, what creativity is and why it matters. There
are ethical, historical, and philosophical reasons to
follow this path. But in this article, we would like to
focus on the advantages that a model based on philoso-
phy of processes will bring to our understanding of
human creativity and to CC and 4E cognition (perspec-
tives related to embodied, embedded, extended, and
enactive cognition). Undoubtedly, both fields are inter-
ested in identifying general processes that explain the
dynamics of our world in terms of transformation and
exchange of information or energy.
1
Departamento de Humanidades, División de Ciencias Sociales y
Humanidades, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Cuajimalpa),
Ciudad de México, México
2
Departamento de Tecnologı́as de la Información, División de Ciencias
de la Comunicación y Diseño, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana
(Cuajimalpa), Ciudad de México, México
Corresponding author:
Santiago Negrete-Yankelevich, Departamento de Tecnologı́as de la
Información, División de Ciencias de la Comunicación y Diseño,
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Cuajimalpa), Avenida Vasco de
Quiroga 4871, Col. Santa Fe Cuajimalpa, Cuajimalpa de Morelos, C.P.
05348 Ciudad de México, México.
Email: snegrete@correo.cua.uam.mx
240
Although a ‘‘Thorndikean view’’ that understands
creativity as ‘‘a marvelous addition to the mechanical
processes of ordinary thinking’’ can be considered
dominant (d’Inverno & Still, 2014, p. 4), many of the
authors mentioned above assume that creativity cannot
be explained by referring only to the creative processes
of individual human beings or to an exceptional quality.
Dissatisfaction with this model has to do with an under-
standing of creativity as a ‘‘general process that can be
applied wherever new things come into existence’’
(Bown, 2012, p. 361), meaning that ‘‘clearly societies
and nature invent, too’’ (McCormack, 2012, p. 40).
Making creativity less exceptional requires, however,
much more than ‘‘democratizing’’ it. Acknowledging
that creativity is either a Bergsonian or Deweyan ‘‘basic
principle of the world’’ faces us with the challenge of
defining what world we are referring to, and who the
constitutive agents in it are, in order to understand
what kind of creativity we are considering, and what we
think creativity is.
Our starting point is Gilbert Simondon’s (1924–
1989) work, whose philosophy encompasses a wide
reflection on the nature of the differences and continu-
ities between animals and humans, living beings, and
machines, taking as a point of departure the idea of
1
individuation as a general process. The term ‘‘indivi-
duation’’ points out to the genesis—ontogenic—and
developmental transformations that allow something to
become distinctly different to its surroundings by
acquiring a shape.
Getting a concrete shape in a topological sense
means informing a dominion by generating a structure
that, being compatible with the initial energetic and
material conditions, allows a transition from a meta-
stable state to a more stable system—that is, producing
a transduction that triggers the process of individuation.
Individuation, however, does not necessarily mean
2
enclosure or definite stability.
Following a thermodynamical model, any structure,
in order to change, must have some potential energy; a
structure, in other terms, must reproduce the state of
tension that allowed it to emerge, so that, in a sense, it
is never a unity (a homogeneous entity), but a steady
tension that characterizes far-from-equilibrium pro-
cesses. To keep this tension, the individual must
actively contribute to the maintenance of its constitu-
tive conditions. It must become able to thrive in rela-
tion to itself. Its plasticity or ability to change will
depend on the presence of some margin of indetermina-
tion or potentiality. Thus, unless an individual has
attained a definite state of stability—a state of energetic
impoverishment—it keeps being susceptible of further
transformations (within the limits imposed by its con-
stitutive conditions). Nonetheless, once such state of
stability has been attained, it can become energy again
if it enters in a relationship of tension with another
individual.
Adaptive Behavior 26(5)
The successive stages between metastability and sta-
bility represent the basic dynamics of information pro-
duction, and so artistic production is as a good example
of individuation as a process of crystallization:
The same [i.e., that it is stabilized energy that has reached
its transformation limits] can be said of the pure and com-
plete pictorial form, which appears on the horizon of the
almost illegible entanglement of earlier sketches, such as
the admirable preparatory drawings of the artists who let
the pen run forming the pre-individual skein for future
births. As such, the drawing is a metastable field patterned
with tensions from which lines gradually emerge where the
individualizing forms stabilize. However, these forms can
become energetic power again, if we combine them with
other forms and if we integrate them into a more complex
structure as energy potential in phases of tension and in
search of resolution. The painter’s gesture in direct contact
with this metastable field of lines and colours is a theater
of individualizations. (Garelli, 2013, p. 16)
Thus, Simondon creates a framework where general
processes of creative information generation can be
explained. His approach clearly encompasses, we
believe, contemporary notions referred to dynamic sys-
tems and far-from-equilibrium processes, as autopoietic
enactivism associated with prebiotic processes of iden-
tity production, adaptivity, and enactive and embodied
cognition in living beings (see, for example,
Barandiaran & Moreno, 2006, 2008). The two most
important contributions of his theory are, for our pur-
pose, that it does not privilege living beings as the sole
beings able to attain a level of autonomy, enough as to
operate in terms of an inside–outside dichotomy, and
that it does not require to take the individual as ontolo-
gically prior to any distinction of this type (cf. Moreno
& Barandiaran, 2004, pp. 14, 17). This gives us a
chance to avoid the discussion about neurodynamic
systems and assume, nonetheless, that some kind of
‘‘soma’’ or account of the physical organization of the
individual system, either in a process to attain stability
or as an already stabilized individual, is necessary to
assess its possibilities of creative production. It is pre-
cisely this somatic approach that will help us to give an
account of machine creativity specifically. Although an
individual must be considered jointly with its inherent
potentialities and cannot be ontologically reduced only
to its organizational features or responses to external
influences, that individual depends on being part of a
metastable system in order to become truly creative.
That said, we are not denying that there are signifi-
cant differences between living and nonliving beings. In
fact, an account of how all these differences are articu-
lated in a mutual interaction exceeds the scope of this
work. The aims of this article are first, to explore how
these differences emerge when two open systems, a
machine and a human being, in the same environment
Valverde-Pérez and Negrete-Yankelevich
begin an informational exchange. And second, of
course, how they integrate in emergent relationships
and emergent information, thus orienting their respec-
tive process of individuation by what we usually call
creative action. This is what we will call relational crea-
tivity further down, but, for now, we will describe
transduction as a preliminary concept.
Transduction is an operation that consists of the cre-
ation of new structures out of two elements that are in
tension without missing information or reducing one of
3
the elements to the other. Let us see a couple of exam-
ples of what it means at different levels:
1. The discovery that sustained friction in combustible
matter produces fire, changing the experiential cau-
sal connection between heat and light. One relates
sunlight to the feeling of heat through the experience
of standing in the sun, but understanding that heat
(through friction) can produce light entails an entire
restructuring of one’s internal relationships between
friction, heat, and light.
2. The discovery of the ratio, proportion, and other
connections between two disparate sounds can even-
tually lead to a whole system of music composition.
The operation resolves the tension and accommo-
dates both elements in a new structure. This operation
can be ‘‘physical, biological, mental, social’’ and exceeds
the logical dimension by producing new structures by
iteration (being crystallization the simplest example at
the physical level) (see Simondon, 1958/2013, p. 32).
Because of its narrative structure—we will turn later to
this important feature—transduction is explicative, and
hence, it is also a methodological tool. Giving meaning
and solution is part of the same operation that shapes
the surrounding and the inner world, because there is
always a necessary continuity between them in active,
plastic beings.
Simondon and other philosophers of technology
which share important features with his approach
(Harman, 2002; Lafitte, 1932/1972) claim that—contrary
to cybernetic approaches—technological objects cannot
be reduced to the use they have been designed for. The
idea is that machines hold and produce, as living beings
do, relations with other types of beings that are also
essential moments in their individuation process and can-
not be entirely controlled from a human perspective, nor
can they be predicted due to the changes undergone in
the process of individuation. Of course, not all machines
are equally plastic; but they evolve, face change, and can
become autonomous regarding to the initial conditions
of their production. The question of what a machine is
not settled beforehand.
This approach has advantages in providing a philo-
sophical framework for natural and artificial creativity:
241
 It stresses the inherent indeterminacy of human and
nonhuman beings, while supporting at the same
time an ‘‘internal principle’’ which directs the rela-
tionships with their own surroundings. Thus, it
explains the constitutive heterogeneity of the world
without resorting to fixed categories or classes of
beings.
 Because it puts information integration at the core
of individuation, and, as we shall see, such integra-
tion is defined in terms of creativity, it makes crea-
tivity a widespread capability that does not need to
be connected to consciousness, intentionality, or cog-
nitive ‘‘normality.’’ Obviously, this feature opens the
door for a broader definition of creativity and allows
for the introduction of nonconceptual ways of infor-
mation integration as crucial creative outputs of
human and nonhuman beings. It even makes sense
to start to question the role creativity plays in cogni-
tion from an embodied point of view (see Kyselo &
Di Paolo, 2015). The ethical implications of this
move are clear, especially when we think of vulnera-
ble, unstable, ‘‘anomalous’’ individuals.
We think that applying this framework to machines
would make how creativity works as an inherent princi-
ple in a specific type of machine more understandable,
and how this creativity also helps to enforce or to
strengthen concomitant human creative processes when
there is human interaction involved. There are further
advantages in this perspective. First, we can establish a
common basis for creativity that would allow us to
learn more about the specificities of human creativity.
Second, focusing on the creative roots of individuation
leads us to acknowledge the intrinsic creative potential
of any being despite its physical and physiological con-
figuration and not to dismiss any object—in Harman’s
(2014) broad sense—for its apparent or suspected dis-
abilities (either cognitive or not). Moreover, as
machines increasingly populate our surroundings,
including them in the landscape of creativity and crea-
tive individuation would give us a better understanding
of how possible futures with intense machine interac-
tion would look like. Finally, we think that being able
to recognize the creative potential of machines as a
result of transductive processes will change the way we
conceive human–machine interactions. Far from mak-
ing machines, a simulacra of human beings—or worse,
humans a simulacra of machines—this approach could
profit from the obvious differences between them.
In the following sections, we will try to deal with
such questions by offering an answer to the question of
how creativity can be identified in machines. The first
section after this introduction—Learning, adaptation,
and creativity—deals with the differences between these
three concepts. The second one—Machines, emotions,
242
and evaluation—deals with how machines can be under-
stood as creative without resorting to rule awareness
that would sanction the creative nature of the process.
In the third section—Creativity in a shared semiotic
world: a thought experiment on human and nonhuman
creative coevolution—we integrate in an imaginary sce-
nario our semiotic model to explain how artificial crea-
tivity could work and how machines could interact
with human beings, fostering their own creativity in a
Simondonian sense. In the conclusion, we discuss how
a relational interaction between a machine and a
human can help us understand how a valuable creation
is produced for both participants from different view-
points in a single production, and why this is important
in a shared future with machines and computational
systems.
2. Learning, adaptation, and creativity
Discovery and creativity are operations connected to
learning. In the same way, learning and transduction
are closely related (Simondon, 1958/2013, p. 190). As a
matter of fact, it is difficult to disentangle them, even in
the process that Boden calls P-creativity, relying exclu-
sively on notions of ‘‘mental maps’’ and ‘‘styles of think-
ing’’ (see Boden, 2004, p. 6). Learning, however, when it
is equated with a sustained conditioned response is not
transductive. There is no integration and modulation of
a new environment and transformation of the involved
individual or further elaboration of the information
(Simondon, 1958/2013, p. 206). Thus, a fish or an
Australian marbled frog can learn to avoid poisonous
preys, such as cane toads (see Greenlees, Phillips, &
Shine, 2010), without being creative. We know they
learn because we can record a change in behavior.
However, such response does not imply information
integration at a more encompassing level. At least, it is
unclear that it produces a different way of organizing
the surroundings by producing a new capability in the
individual’s way of relating to the surroundings.
The structure of transduction apparently matches
that of most ‘‘insight problems.’’ They require the con-
struction of a narrative or the discovery of a dimension
in which the specifications for solving it and the appar-
ent contradiction in the way the problem is set out
makes sense. Here are a couple of examples:
1. Try to build four triangles with six sticks of the same
4
length.
2. Mr Hardy was washing windows on a high-rise
office building when he slipped and fell off a 60-foot
ladder onto the concrete sidewalk below. Incredibly,
he did not injure himself in any way. How is it possi-
5
ble? (Beaty, Nusbaum, & Silvia, 2014)
Adaptive Behavior 26(5)
It is obvious that both problems are directed to
human beings, both by its cultural and physiological
requirements. However, the first seems to us much
more universal and interesting for the following
reasons:
 It can be somehow adapted to other physiologies
that cannot handle sticks in the way humans do.
 It combines a problem of resources (sticks), abilities
(handling sticks), organization (three-dimensional
(3D), and memory.
 It has potential transformational impact on the
dynamics of problem-solving and environment
organization. Once you have solved the problem,
you will be able to apply the solution to other cases
and even to structure larger spaces. This is similar
to Boden’s (2004) notion of transformational crea-
tivity (p. 5) in that the current inner structures of
an agent (understood as its conceptual space) are
transformed in such a way that new possibilities are
created. The notion of relational creativity we are
introducing in this article, however, does not
require that the new structures generated are con-
cepts but just new, previously unknown, ways of
relating to the environment and other agents that
endow the agent with new possibilities for interac-
tion and adaptation.
Such kinds of puzzles are at the core of the strategies
deployed by living beings in shaping their environment.
We can think immediately of the challenges faced by
beavers in building structures that must take into
account the strength of currents, the logistics of moving
their building materials, the presence of associate build-
ings, and the potential consequences of icing or sudden
changes on the volume of water; finding solutions to
such particular challenges requires insight and explora-
tion of new performative abilities that shape cognitive
abilities (Gould & Gould, 2007). But we also think—
although maybe not so immediately—in the optimal
ganglion organization that follows the principle of wir-
ing economy, a structure that will produce every possi-
ble path of information between three transmitters and
three receptors (or three motor nerve cells and three
sensory nerve cells) with the minimum number of ele-
ments (see Ramón & Cajal, 1897). Such a solution will
bring new functional abilities and morphological
changes, which will define new situations as challenges.
Eventually, this type of structure would grow in com-
plexity and autonomy in a recursive process of informa-
tion exchanging and processing. Because this exchange
crucially entails, when we deal with transduction and
creativity, the enhancement and/or reorganization of
previous abilities, or the emergence of new ones, it is
inseparable from the process of individuation. From
Valverde-Pérez and Negrete-Yankelevich
this viewpoint, adaptation is a concurrent result of
creativity but not every adaptive response is creative.
According to enactive approaches, creativity implies
an individual able to perceive a situation and change
itself by its own actions, according to its margins of
plasticity (Di Paolo, 2005; Di Paolo & Iizuka, 2008).
To perceive means here not merely a way of ‘‘seeing’’
the ‘‘outer world.’’ It is a way of integrating conflicting
situations in a broader interrelationship, putting things
in a systemic relationship while defining the new posi-
tion that the active, performing individual will be able
to hold (see Moreno & Barandiaran, 2004). It requires
taking into account the particular limitations of incom-
patibilities between the ‘‘anomalies’’ that are considered
for interaction and also to define the suitable levels or
interaction according to the specific levels of plasticity
of the individuals involved. Creativity is a sensing-
doing-becoming process, which can take more or less
time, and whose main result is not only a product but
also a change in the individual who engages in such
interaction. The individual who relates to such creative
actions also grows in complexity, robustness, and
autonomy.
This is particularly noticeable in collective creativity,
when the rate of exchange of information and socializa-
tion of ‘‘perceptions of disparateness’’ or contradictions
between at least two events is simultaneous to collective
actions where the creative individual is an emerging
collective individual (see Maher, 2012). This is equally
noticeable in improvised exchange, where each individ-
ual participating in an improvised dialogue or musical
performance contributes in every stage to the enrich-
ment of the overall emerging performance (Sawyer,
2003, 2006). Thus, individuation is a benefit to the (col-
lective) individual who performs the creative act, no
matter if he himself is or is not created to perform a
particular function and regardless of whether this indi-
vidual is a machine or not.
The product that emerges from a creative process
cannot be separated from the process itself or its initial
conditions: it is not reversible, and it also sustains the
conditions that allowed it to emerge. But the process
brings something new, material, and concrete—a new
object with ontological dimension that connects two
separate regions without being exactly the same in/for
each one. This object can be a fictional character, a
work of art, a mechanical device, an equation . it is
being part of different material, conceptual,
and ontological regions, jointly with its inherent plasti-
city and indetermination, what allows it to ‘‘amplify,’’
to be extended and have a deep impact in broader
spaces.
How do computational machines incorporate to this
framework? What do they specifically need to be crea-
tive in the sense defined above? Let us see an example.
243
2.1. Two individual co-creativity
Let us take a look at an imaginary scenario to exem-
plify the concepts we have mentioned so far. Imagine
there are two individuals in adjacent cells who can
exchange small objects through a hole between the
cells.
Individual A has narrow strips of paper, ink, and a
stamp that impresses a triangle. Individual B has scis-
sors and glue. Both prisoners only communicate by
exchanging objects through the hole.
Let us say that A stamps a triangle on a piece of
paper and gives it to B. B can cut the contour of the tri-
angle off and give the separated figure back to A. If A
gives to B two triangles, then B can cut them off the
paper and glue them together by one of the edges from
each one forming a new figure and give it back to A. A
discovers that B can do something he cannot (i.e. cut
and glue). B realizes that A likewise can do something
he cannot (i.e. provide basic material to work on). B
tries to make the figures more complex by gluing as
many sides as possible. Let us now imagine there is a
moment when B combines four triangles to make a tet-
rahedron. Occasionally, and considering the physical
support in which information is given to him, B realizes
that he can also fold the strip to produce volumes
following the borders of the triangles. He then sends it
to A.
A starts stamping triangles considering also its fold-
ing possibilities, that is, producing longer or shorter
strips of triangles next to each other making spaces
between them more conspicuous, posing additional
challenges to B for folding. He begins thinking about
series of triangles as potential elements of volumetric
shapes. Thus, he starts also thinking differently about
his communicational strategy and considering it as
instructions.
At this point, several things take place:
1. A and B have established a communication method
by which both produce things the other appreciates
and cannot produce on his own.
2. B has made a transduction from two into three
dimensions and thereby reconfigured the way he can
process information received from A. This new con-
figuration enables him to expand (amplify) the struc-
ture to produce new things (3D objects).
3. A receives back 3D objects that he appreciates
because they expand his creative universe in a way
that can maximize its communicative strategy.
4. A and B establish a new creative relationship in
which 3D objects are introduced.
Either of these two individuals can be a machine.
Specifically, we think of B as a machine and A as a
human being. In any case, the example condenses what
244
we understand by relational creativity. The general fea-
tures of a machine behaving coherently in the proposed
scenario are situatedness, openness, and autonomy.
The three undergoing processes that take place are envi-
ronment molding, the orientation of plasticity toward
amplification, and sharing or ‘‘second amplification’’
(which in the example is radically limited to a universe
of two entities).
Computers, just like any human or living being, are
situated. Situatedness refers both to the embodied and
socially shaped nature of knowledge and identity
(Haraway, 1988; Leigh Star, 1991). It has become an
important concept for cognitive sciences and AI, partic-
ularly for epigenetic robotics (see Lindblom & Ziemke,
2003). Besides the abovementioned compatibility
between energetic and material conditions, a specific
human cultural environment is also an initial condition
for computers. Programming provides them with part
of the potential to begin to define its own process of
individuation, in the same way that any living being
requires an informational matrix for developing. A
computer program is by itself a transduction because it
informs the compatible convergence between physical
conditions and social expectations, knowledge, and val-
ues. In this way, it sets the conditions under which min-
imal self-reference in a defined world could be attained
and sustained along a line of time by the machine. So
situatedness is the condition of autonomy, and its
6
effect.
For this interaction to take place, both individuals
must be open. Openness is a condition of transduction
because it implies that the situated machine is able to
identify occasional discrepancies in internal or external
events, not directly related to any specific ongoing task,
and to give meaning to them eventually. In order to be
reachable by new stimuli, the agent needs to be open to
them, to let them emerge for him but also to actively
search interaction and explore its affordances toward a
7 doing, and he must evolve in doing so, he must trans-
target—a ‘‘reference,’’ in Harman’s (2002, p. 36) terms.
This disposition also involves the ability to take advan-
tage of the nonevident properties of (at least) one of
several agents involved. The selection of stimuli is thus
neither driven by the identification of a privileged
source nor is the same kind of stimuli expected from
the same source. Of course, the range of stimuli that
can be interpreted depends on the structural possibili-
ties of the machine, but also on the way it is socially
and culturally embedded. In our example, the task is
not settled beforehand, but the actual change in cap-
abilities (from gluing to folding) is defined in connec-
tion to the possibility of given meaning to the shapes
between the stamped triangles and the shape of the
strip, the possibility of identifying a second presence
that is associated with a concrete anomaly in the uni-
verse at the moment the individuation process is started
and the need of continuity associated with the emergent
tasks. In this sense, we prefer talking about affordances
Adaptive Behavior 26(5)
(Ingold, 2007) that always remind us of the social and
cultural nature of capabilities.
Openness is part of the autonomy of an individual.
Being autonomous means being able to preserve or
increase information (Simondon, 1958/2013, p. 191). In
other words, being able to exchange information and
appropriate information from others. This requires a
memory and being able to detect differences and inter-
pret them according to his situated space.
Interpretation here means the ability to react to stimuli
and classify them according to the threat they can pose
by their proximity to the thresholds below and beyond
which the initial conditions that guarantee structural
and informational architecture fall apart. This is, how-
ever, a nonlinear function because the probabilities of
reacting differently to a given input depend also on the
individual’s inward openness.
Interaction, as said, gives room to three scenarios.
The creative process is triggered by an interpretation
whereby it is detected that there is some ‘‘problem,’’ or
unmatched pieces of information, that require ‘‘making
sense’’ of. The subject of such interpretation can be of a
different nature (man, machine, animal, group, com-
munity, etc.). The creative output does not only give
this subject an integrative (or amplifying) solution for
the problem or puzzle, but also a strategy for dealing
with it in a different way with similar information, thus
‘‘molding’’ the environment. This seemingly fits Bown’s
(2012) definition of ‘‘adaptive creativity.’’ It entails
something more: through the process of creating new
structures, the individual becomes more robust,
extended, and autonomous, and the world gains coher-
ence according to his viewpoint without becoming
something ‘‘fixed.’’ But it also entails that the creative
individual evolves, its affordances change, and he
becomes able to deal with different problems. So inte-
gration means a change in the individual’s ways-of-
form himself. Moreover, his interpretation of the sur-
roundings does not necessary match other human
expectations or ways of thinking or doing.
Third, any act of creativity catalyzes the attention of
surrounding agents toward the focus of innovation (or,
conversely, generates an outbound flow of information
from this focus). So other individuals who share the
space and have similar or tangential problems begin to
process, store, transmit, and transform information in
a similar way. Moreover, the initial focus of innovation
can become a leader of his space, someone who com-
municates or processes information for others, trigger-
ing a process of social growth and the consolidation of
communities that distribute the production and assess-
ment of the creative action. But less hierarchical, more
distributed forms of collective creativity can also take
place, producing transindividual or supraindividual
creative structures. It is this spreading or ‘‘second
Valverde-Pérez and Negrete-Yankelevich
amplification’’ that constitutes the core of the social
evaluation of the creative product.
This is a coarse account of the complexities sur-
rounding the emergence of new things, but as we pres-
ent it, these three scenarios are deeply connected. In
CC, they have been generally considered separately,
under different types of models of creativity: computa-
tional models of abstract creativity, computational
models of cognitive processes, and computational mod-
els of social creativity (Saunders & Bown, 2015, p. 368).
But we think that the three processes that take place
in these scenarios—situated organization, integration,
self-transformation, and collective implementation—
take place in each case of creative production.
According to the previous discussion, we can sum-
marize the notion of relational creativity as follows: an
agent, in relation to other agents, is considered creative
if it is capable of integrating into its functioning new
(previously unforeseen) stimuli (coming from other
agents or the environment) and relate them, in a unified
and coherent way, to other stimuli of the same type by
means of its own not entirely determined reaction. This
response notwithstanding must be coherent with its his-
tory of reactions and resonate both internally and with
8
the surrounding objects or agents. The following sec-
tion will explain the kinds of rules that are embodied
and embedded in computer machines and how they
structure a space of rule production.
3. Machines, emotions, and evaluation
Many of the ways in which information is handled and
knowledge is produced are not totally explicit, nor are
they for the others or for the subject itself. This means
they are not necessary conscious.
In the first place, much of the knowledge involved in
everyday, scientific, technological, and creative practice
is tacit (Polanyi, 1962/2005); that is, the agent is una-
ware of the rules, nature, and amount of practices
involved in the action. Any attempt to describe
the creative process must take this into account or risk
to obscure some emergent features of the creative pro-
cess (see Di Paolo, Buhrmann, & Barandiaran, 2017, p.
12).
In order to clarify the conditions of possibility of
creativity when there is no awareness of the entire crea-
tive process, Collins (2007) has claimed there are two
kinds of tacit knowledge (TK): somatic-limit TK and
collective TK. The typical example for somatic-limit
TK is the amount of knowledge required by a human
for biking. Collins considers it the result of the physical
constraints of an agent, defined in its functional rela-
tion to another entity. He also considers this knowledge
susceptible of being made explicit (i.e. formalizable). In
a sense, somatic rules define the thresholds of the plas-
ticity of each of the agents engaged in interaction at a
245
due moment, but they cannot make explicit their own
potential for change and their range of openness. In
other terms, even if each member of the human–bicycle
system provides relevant information about each other,
you cannot produce bicycles by merely analyzing the
TK required to ride them, no more than you can pro-
duce a human just out of the information provided by
a bicycle. Thus, the potentialities of any being or object
to engage in a new relationship or interaction that
would result in a new product are always unpredictable
for a stabilized or well-performing system.
Any attempt to grasp these potentialities by addi-
tion, that is, by taking into consideration the different
simultaneous uses imposed by interaction with a plural-
ity of beings, will always be inadequate. A human is not
merely the host of millions of microorganisms, acari,
bacteria; nor is she the sum of the relationships she has
with other humans. She cannot be defined by aggrega-
tion; even if there is always a part of disclosure in each
relationship, no amount of known relationships can
grasp her totally. Technological artifacts are in the same
way indeterminate, that is, they cannot be reduced only
to the intended function they are supposed to accom-
plish. Or, at least, good, significant technologies—that
is, opened to the world, sensible to new information—
are functionally indeterminate (Simondon, 1958/2001,
p. 11).
Indeterminacy emerges or becomes evident within a
relational process, when some unexpected potentialities
become active or, conversely, whenever something sud-
denly fails to accomplish well-established and expected
interactions. We become aware of the uses we made of
other entities when our intentions toward them become
ineffectual (see, for example, Harman, 2002, pp. 19–20).
In contrast, collective TK is considered to be the
result of the ability to absorb social rules, that is, social
sensibility. It is a form of distributed knowledge that
allows one to collectively recognize or establish innova-
tion and differentiate it from ‘‘foolishness.’’ Collective
tacit rules make the action understandable, traceable,
or interpretable to the community where it is embedded
by defining tacitly assumed expectations about what
well-performing is in very general terms. The typical
example here is improvisation: how do we know that
our improvised performance is doing well as a signifi-
cant contribution, and it is not just jumble? No single
individual can consciously assume to possess the total-
ity of this knowledge, and thus, ‘‘changes in the content
of the knowledge belonging to communities is (sic)
beyond the control of the individuals within the com-
munities’’ (Collins, 2007, p. 260). This implies that
many times one individual cannot properly evaluate
the creative impact of his or her contribution: he is
unsure about what he did, he does not know that he
did innovate, or he fails to grasp why others are unable
to acknowledge it. But also, it explains how a produc-
tion emerges as an unexpected solution justified by
246
avoiding a noncontextualized and general violation of
9
collective expectations. This is why the enforcement of
tacit rules beyond an agent’s control must to be taken
into consideration.
Failure to perform always produces a double refer-
ence. Even if it is not immediately possible or easy to
identify who is failing, the breaking of a relationship
10
makes apparent the existence of at least two terms.
11
Concern about failure is both social and individual. It
unveils that something has become an asset, a resource
for a self. It unveils the value we attach to it. The degree
of concern also discloses the degree of importance that is
attached to that resource. It shows to what extent the
sense of vulnerability is social and socially driven, in the
specific sense that it is related to active engagement to
others. The construction of self-reference is then intrinsi-
cally related to failure. Moreover, this implies ontological
and moral considerations. The introduction of fallibility
as something inherent to any properly working mechan-
isms and human/nonhuman systems restrains us from
any attempt to reduce agents to the category of ‘‘satisfac-
tory device’’ or ‘‘satisfactory user,’’ or—better still—to
the categories of either device or user.
But failure also poses the question of continuity:
how do the potentialities unexpectedly brought up by
failure become an asset and what drives agents toward
resuming action? If agents are open to unexpected
changes, reactions, or benefits, their expectations
regarding well-performing must not be very rigid.
Thus, creativity takes place in an open (or subdetermi-
nate) mutual reference; the higher the indeterminacy or
possibilities of the agents, the greater the possibilities of
unexpected results. Avoiding failure couples with a sus-
tained drive toward maintaining a critical number of
capabilities. Its number can always increase but not
decrease. In other words, initial conditions cannot be
changed by the individual who emerges from them, but
they can always produce new constraints that give way
to new functions and values (see Di Paolo, 2005).
Taking this conception of failure into account, the
following two paragraphs explore, respectively, the
minimal set of rules that can structure TK in a machine
and that define a dominion in a potentially creative
exchange of information; and how action toward others
is triggered and integration of information accom-
plished in a way that self-transforms the creative non-
human agent.
3.1. Tacit rules
In a mutual or relational creative process, if the cap-
abilities or possibilities attributed to a target or refer-
ence change, then the entire ‘‘state of affairs’’ previous
to that change is also modified. This means the reac-
tions, capabilities, experiences, and memories of the
agents engaged are also mutually modified (and some
previous creative solutions are then lost). Such
Adaptive Behavior 26(5)
ontological change is not (needs not be) dependent on
the mental representation of a human actor because the
value of the ontological change is collectively shaped by
heterogeneous collectivities. However, it requires some
framework within which the identification of change in
another entity is possible. For the purpose of this arti-
cle, a suitable definition on how value is attributed to
this change is the following:
Whenever the world changes in such a way that no previ-
ous tacit expectations about the involved agents are satis-
fied, the value assigned by any agent to the change
depends on the reactions (positive or negative) to the new
state of the capabilities/properties/possibilities detected in
at least one of the agents involved in the process (including
the evaluating agent).
A minimal set of conditions for a creative system to
work in a way that change can be detected and could
eventually be valued as creative must, hence, comply
with the following rules:
Graceful degradation (TK1). A system open to interac-
tion necessarily includes a sense of graceful degradation
(Russell & Norvig, 2003, p. 566), where a system per-
forms gracefully (i.e. in a manner that displays a beha-
vior that goes along with some restrictions to maintain
self-preservation, avoid damage to others or the envi-
ronment, minimize time of recovery) whenever faced
with the prospect of failure. It is necessarily auto-trans-
formative, but it is only accidentally auto-destructive.
Meaningful failure (TK2). Failure is defined in such a
way that it makes explicit the gap between the actual
state of affairs and the current behavior of the agent as a
contradiction that urges solution. It is always evaluated
12
as a restoration to free use and suspension of routine
within the thresholds defined by graceful degradation. It
must be correlated to the eruption of intentionality (even
if, as failure, it has at first only a negative shape).
Communicative solidarity and ontological symmetry
(TK3). Creative openness toward others does justice to
every engaged agent by acknowledging their different
natures and ontological symmetry in the sense that all
exchanges acknowledge the human/nonhuman condi-
tion of the partner and act accordingly. In a human/
nonhuman system, the relationship must be based on
active communication, that is, both partners must show
a constant interest in the communication with the other,
although the nature of their interest will deeply differ.
3.2. ‘‘Lure for feeling’’ or the economy of evaluation
The abovementioned rules explain the conservative
forces that drive and define a computational system
notion of integrity and maximum degree of plasticity.
Failing to accomplish them entails dissolution. But to
Valverde-Pérez and Negrete-Yankelevich
be creative, it also has to have the impulse to prioritize
reactions to stimuli and relationships, according to
emerging values related to its own benefit—as self-pre-
servation, generation of capacities, comfort, or preser-
vation of resources. Such drive is thus connected to the
ability to define threats or the risks of failure, value dif-
ferent ways of engaging with other entities and change
this value by tracing how they progress in time, accord-
ing to changing circumstances. Therefore, we can say
that it must be able to evaluate its own situatedness
and to produce a ‘‘self-contextual interpretation.’’
According to Alfred North Whitehead and Charles
S. Peirce, the creative process is intrinsically connected
to (1) prehension and/or interpretation of experience
through feelings, and (2) coherence production, that is,
transformation of incoherence into coherence, being
coherence a possibility that is referred to feelings. The
latter interpretation—not necessarily a concept or
idea—can be a physical reaction that is referred to feel-
ings. Speaking in terms of its inner informational struc-
ture, entities are the result of a process of concrescence
of ‘‘prehensions.’’ Each prehension is a basic node of
relationships consisting of three elements: the prehend-
ing subject (or the entity composed by those prehen-
sions), the prehended datum, and the form in which the
subject prehends the datum. According to the nature of
the data, prehensions are physical or conceptual, but
‘‘consciousness is not necessarily involved in the subjec-
tive forms of either type of prehension’’ (Whitehead,
1927–1928/1978, p. 23). There are, instead, two species
of prehension: positive, ‘‘termed feelings’’; and negative,
‘‘which are said to ‘eliminate from feeling’’’ (Whitehead,
1927–1928/1978, p. 23). This means that they hold the
datum as inoperative. Emotions, valuations, purposes,
aversions, consciousness are different species of this
subjective form (Whitehead, 1927–1928/1978, p. 24).
As Shaviro (2009) notes, Whitehead often uses the
terms ‘‘feeling,’’‘‘emotion,’’ and ‘‘affect’’ as interchange-
able, it is possible to make a distinction between ‘‘feel-
ing’’ and ‘‘emotion’’ (p. 47). ‘‘Feeling’’ is the basis for
experience as it refers to the reception of data, or to an
encounter with data irreducible to cognition (Shaviro,
2009, p. 62). Emotion, on its part, is the specific man-
ner in which the feeling is felt, the inescapable step of a
series of ‘‘supplemental feelings.’’ It is by no means
detachable from feeling and physical circumstances, it
is radically embodied and it is the theater that allows
the subject to emerge as a term of an encounter with
something else. Emotion is common to every being—
organic or not—and the basis of experience (not a by-
product of cognition, on the contrary, its condition of
possibility). As a primitive experience, emotion feels
(vaguely) the relevance of a feeling to a world
(Whitehead, 1927–1928/1978, p. 163). However, in high
phases of experience and concrescence—as human or
animal experience—subjective emphasis is enhanced
and emotions become ‘‘interpreted, integrated and
247
transformed in higher categories of feeling’’ (163). The
theory of prehensions, and particularly Whitehead’s defi-
nition of a new, unexpected proposition, provides a good
framework for exploring the way a nonhumanoid com-
putational machine can produce self-reference and pur-
pose without resorting to cognitive human capabilities.
First, a proposition is always a new kind of entity
(or anomaly) that implies the potentiality of an actual
world (it refers to the world where it is possible).
Roughly speaking, a usual (not new) proposition is
often reproduced because it satisfies the ‘‘lure for feel-
ing’’ of any actual entity that is part of the universe of
such proposition. Whitehead (1927–1928/1978) calls
the ‘‘lure of feeling’’ to the mechanism that mates data
13
with feelings in a way that the quality of the feeling
cannot be determined by the input or data to which it
is referred (p. 85). Once a match is produced, the indi-
vidual tends to repeat it.
Instead, any new proposition or input has to be
admitted into feeling. In this sense, ‘‘a proposition is
‘realized’ by a member of its locus, when it is admitted
into feeling,’’ then ‘‘the proposition constitutes what the
feeling has felt’’ (Whitehead, 1927–1928/1978, p. 186).
How does this admission occur? The primary mode of
realization is primary feelings of ‘‘horror, relief, pur-
pose’’ (Whitehead, 1927–1928/1978 p. 188). This means
the subject that prehends the proposition presupposes
some type of environment coherent with its own possi-
bility. How does a new proposition occur? How is ‘‘a
novelty of definiteness not to be found in the inherited
data’’ (Whitehead, 1927–1928/1978, p. 104) produced?
An abridged version of Whitehead’s response—and
hence distorted, but apt to express what we are attempt-
ing to do in this paper—is that the very same system
that is able to identify the sources of danger for its envi-
ronment and create a hierarchy of feelings according to
the satisfaction it receives by iterating through them, is
also able to screen for incompatible elements and react
to them.
Therefore, the first step for any machine to be called
‘‘creative’’ is that it must be capable of ‘‘feeling’’ and
referring propositions to feelings. The term ‘‘feeling’’
refers here to the ability to connect a received signal
and respond to it with a reaction that, almost immedi-
ately, is valuated according to satisfactory feelings that
are used to organize the expectations toward other
agents and entities. The interactions correlated to these
feelings are also coherently repeated according to the
degree of satisfaction. But a creative machine must also
be motivated by the ‘‘lure of feeling’’ and, hence, react
toward irrelevant or unnoticed details when they
become a contrast (by repetition, for example) or when
their incompatibility with their ordinary environment
becomes apparent. As it increases and preserves more
information, it becomes more autonomous.
Figure 1 illustrates the hypothetical initial status or
point of departure of an ideal machine, where the gray
248 Adaptive Behavior 26(5)

area representing actual expectations toward surround-

ing objects is almost nonexistent and feelings are identi-
fied with general areas of pleasure, displeasure, and
tendencies to repeat the experience. (The names of the
feelings are, of course, arbitrary, and we do not expect
human-like feelings from the machine.) Figure 2 illus-
trates a subsequent stage, at which the number and spe-
cificity of feelings have increased. As well as the area of
justified expectation of feelings. Hence, the possibility
of increasing the frequency of some reactions associated
with pleasant feelings, and avoiding those related to
unpleasant ones (especially those located in the lower-
left quadrant, marked with a circle) is greater. These
drawings are based on Figure 3, which illustrates the
intersection between subjective and objective realities
or affection and sensation. Figure 4 illustrates how such Figure 1. Illustration of a hypothetical ‘‘feeling’’ space a
a nonhuman agent can organize its surroundings and machine can use when interacting.
start the self-creation, individuation process using the
abovementioned TK rules.

4. Creativity in s shared semiotic world: a

thought experiment on human and
nonhuman creative coevolution
To try to illustrate the ideas just exposed, we will follow
an imaginary example scenario where we make a com-
puting system that would be able to develop a creative,
communicative association with a person unable to com-
municate back in a conventional way. Such is the case of
a person suffering from locked-in syndrome (LIS)
(Laureys et al., 2005). LIS patients (LISp) are people
who are awake and conscious but almost completely
paralyzed (i.e. have no means of producing speech, limb,
or facial movements, except, occasionally, for some lim- Figure 2. Machine feelings at a more developed stage.
ited eye and/or finger movements). Years ago, patients
suffering from this syndrome could spend a long time
lying on a bed before doctors discovered they are actu-
ally conscious (6 years in the case of Julia Tavalaro).
Even if they are known to be conscious and are subject
to some therapy, they spend long hours on their own
and, as some testimonies collected from LISp through
various communication mechanisms have shown, they
feel very lonely and depressed (Tavalaro & Tayson,
1997). The communication mechanisms mentioned
include human or computer-based letter selection to
form words.
We have chosen this scenario for three reasons.
First, because it is easier, due to the limited movement
capabilities, LISp have to imagine the type of reactions
and relationships a patient and a computer can develop Figure 3. Diagram of the basis of individuation.
overtime. Second, because contrary to what many peo-
ple may assume, and despite the hardness of the condi-
tion and the dramatic change of life it implies, most that would help patients remain mentally active when-
LISp still experience meaning and purpose in life, and ever they have no one else to interact with. But also,
identity continuity (Nizzi et al., 2012); an exciting and and fundamentally, the system we envision could pro-
entertaining system could become a companion of sorts vide LISp with a way to subjectively transform
Valverde-Pérez and Negrete-Yankelevich
Figure 4. TK principles are put into practice during prehension. The blue path takes place first and is followed by the red one.
themselves and mold their environment by expanding
their expressive capabilities and interpretations, that is,
their way of engaging with their environment, and also
by manifestly adjusting the environmental information
to their creative needs. We think this imagined scenario
can help to illustrate and make more clear the impor-
tance and ethical dimension of reframing the notion of
creativity.
LISp are functional at a cognitive level (Nizzi et al.,
2012); most of them also experience their condition in a
positive way, that is, as a chance to develop otherwise
hindered or unknown capabilities (see, for example,
Tavalaro & Tayson, 1997). This attitude guarantees
their openness and makes them prone to engage in an
interactive relationship with a system that is:
 Stimulating. The patient has fun while interacting
with the patient because it entails a challenge.
 Emotionally engaging. The patient feels she has
company, support, or other characteristics that can
be associated with other people, animals, dolls,
teddy bears, and so on.
 Enduring. The relationship between the system and
the patient evolves with time and lasts a long time.
And all in all, we can also fairly assume that (cf.
Bauby, 1998):
 They have a strong disposition toward effective
interaction and, hence, the ‘‘lure for feeling’’
required by each of the participants in a relationally
creative interaction.
249
 As any other human being engaged in scientific,
technological, and creative practice, LISp are una-
ware of the whole set of rules they apply in the pro-
cess of creation (Polanyi, 1962/2005).
 LISp face the activity of some nonhuman individual
as intelligible but inexhaustible, and undetermined.
This means there is no stable function attributed to
each other; both remain open to the world and sensi-
ble to new information (Simondon, 1958/2001, p. 11).
These three features are shared, as noted above, by
an ideal creative computational system, like the one
described earlier—which we will now name SHE—with
which a LISp engages. We shall refer to this particular
LISp as LISp1. Let us imagine how the encounter and
collaboration in the creative process would develop
between them and their surroundings. We will not
describe in this article the algorithms necessary to carry
out the tasks described. We will only describe the
machine’s behavior to illustrate the ideas behind our
notion of relational creativity.
4.1. Producing worlds
SHE is a system that is designed, according to the con-
siderations exposed, to be:
1. Open to interaction.
2. Prone to interact (its integrity/unity/individuation
depends upon a constant renewal of its functional
versatility) and please (to obtain positive responses).
3. Inclined to increase its functionality.
250
Figure 5. SHE’s basic reactions to the presence of a body (b1).
Table 1. SHE’s detection capabilities and reactions.
SHE detects SHE produces
Size of an object A beam of light
Temperature Colored light
Movement of an object Sound
4. Sense LISp1’s state of excitement through his heart
rate.
LISp1 and SHE sense the environment. For a period
of time, they scan the environment to see what can be
detected, testing their senses (sensors, in SHE’s case).
This stage allows them to find out what is there, what
can be known, so to speak. The information retrieved
from this state of homogeneity starts the creation of his-
tory that will, in later stages, be used as experience.
For brevity’s sake, we will not describe LISp1’s cog-
nitive process, which are much more complex than
those of the system we are considering. But we will
assume that LISp1 is a conscious human being that has
an adult-level knowledge of the world in general as well
as his immediate surroundings within the physical lim-
itations of his condition (Bauby, 1998).
As Figure 4 suggests, SHE is open to the world by a
set of sensors, some of which are oriented toward the
environment in general and some of which are specifi-
cally focused on LISp1. Let us say that these sensors
allow her to detect three basic elements (size of objects,
movement, and temperature, respectively, marked in
the drawing by an encircled V, M, or T). SHE is able
Adaptive Behavior 26(5)
to react to each one of these stimuli according to the
rules provided in Table 1. A beam of light refers to
light varying in intensity; colored light refers to varying
hues of the beam of light.
For each sensorial capability, SHE has two
possible reactions and can choose either one or both.
This design gives the system more expressiveness. In
Figure 5, the possible reactions to a given sensory input
are represented by a linear function (it is also possible
to use a different type of function). SHE also senses
LISp1’s heart rate, temperature, and other vital signs
to be able to keep track of LISp1’s wellbeing and level
of excitement.
Each reaction is almost immediately followed by the
assignment of a feeling, understood as value in a con-
tinuous scale between constants representing pleasant
and unpleasant set within the physical limits of the
machine (Figure 5). At the start, the features of each
reaction (light, color, sound) are completely unbiased,
and some can produce a feeling of displeasure. For
example, when a sound pitch produced as output is too
high, and so exceeds the thresholds of SHE’s sound
sensors, the feeling will be unpleasant. SHE will store
the connection between such feeling and the related
output in her memory.
Due to the sensors that connect LISp1 to SHE, it
can detect LISp1’s eyelid movements, follow his
thumb’s movement, and sense LISp1’s temperature, as
well as room temperature and luminosity. SHE’s open-
ness toward LISp1 entails a greater level of complexity
when compared with any other surrounding object.
Among other things, this means that LISp1 can inter-
act and intervene in greater measure than any other
Valverde-Pérez and Negrete-Yankelevich
body with SHE, and that he is going to have greater
influence in SHE’s universe than any other object.
The interaction begins from very basic exchanges
and develops over time. LISp1 will increasingly get to
know the sensations and affections that SHE priori-
tizes. LISp1 will be able to intervene, fostering reitera-
tion of his preferred outputs, affecting the speed of the
process, by producing different movements at different
speeds. SHE will not assume LISp1’s criteria as much
as develop an emotional way of responding to him.
Although SHE’s universe is by no means restricted to
LISp1’s, the frequency of exchanges between them will
transform the shared space in a common creative space.
SHE’s memory will also become a shared performative
space.
Constantly, each one integrates new stimuli coming
from the partner and the corresponding reaction into
their own capabilities. The degree of integration
depends on the emotional response caused by the sti-
muli and the level of coherence it has with the emo-
tional history.
Imagine SHE and LISp1 observe each other for a
while and SHE reacts with sounds to LISp1’s small fin-
ger movements. LISp1 does not particularly like the
sounds produced by SHE, so he chooses no to react to
them and stay still. SHE perceives this inaction and tries
to stimulate LISp1’s response by changing its behavior
through its built-in actuators (sound, light intensity,
and color). Whenever SHE produces some special light-
ing conditions in the room that LISp1 likes, he moves
his finger again and SHE eventually establishes the rela-
tionship that finger movements coincide with certain
lighting conditions. After a few days of interaction,
SHE would have established a lighting pattern (color
and intensity) throughout the day that pleases LISp1
but also its own preferences established, as we said
before, according to the limits set by its own construc-
tion. That is, SHE has limits in the light intensity it can
sense and the color ranges that permit it to properly
perceive the world through its camera. The pattern
would probably be something like this: soft light during
the early hours of the morning to wake-up, stronger
light whenever there are visitors, no light whenever
there is enough daylight, and so on.
The perception from an external observer’s view-
point (a visiting doctor, say) is that SHE and LISp1
have developed a creative relationship in which SHE
has made a transduction from sound to light and fol-
lowed a certain pattern throughout the day to maxi-
mize LISp1’s acceptance as well its own adaptability to
the environment. LISp1, on his part, would have found
that SHE is able to perform actions that he cannot do
but that benefit him. They have both reorganized their
internal functioning to increase their adaptability to the
conditions in a beneficial way; established a new way
of interacting between them and their shared surround-
ings through new structures that will modify their
251
capabilities and their way to value them; and changed
the integrative dimensions of LISp1’s surroundings and
the possible strategies to generate new creative organi-
zations in the future.
It is important to mention that the relationship is
not finalized or stable but in continuous development
by the interaction of the two agents. In this imagined
scenario, we want to stress the main point of creative
behavior as defined under Simondon’s notion of trans-
duction. We have a system that interacts with other
entities as well as the environment, and that keeps an
internal sense of wellbeing and a lure of feeling as
described in the previous sections. The system is not
there to fulfill any human expectations or desires but
only to establish a relationship with him in a shared
space. Through this relationship, SHE is capable of cre-
ating new rules (associations, relationships) about
events in the world. These rules enable it to improve its
wellbeing and to expand its possibilities to interact with
the world (new perceptions, relations, associations,
rules).
5. Discussion
Relational creativity establishes the conditions by
which agents can be considered creative through the
relationship they establish with other agents and the
environment. Through these relationships emerge new
properties and capabilities of people and objects that
otherwise could not have occurred. In the human/non-
human case, it is possible to find the discovery of
human capabilities by nonhuman agents, and this
would be per se a valuable contribution to the under-
standing of creative processes.
Human-centered creativity will always have the
problem of finding traits in the creative process that are
exclusively human and needed to evaluate the creative
products. The sequence of arguments includes ‘‘. but
computers have no notion of value,’’ ‘‘computers can-
not tell when something is beautiful,’’ and ‘‘computers
don’t have criteria to decide whether one piece is more
poignant than another’’ (cf. Boden, 2015). This ten-
dency will never end unless the supposedly creative
machine emulates all human cognitive capabilities. This
is so because we place computers in an unfair situation.
We ask them to display properties that are valuable to
us but not necessarily to them. We still perceive com-
puters as tools that are there to fulfill our needs directly.
A contrasting view—that of a computer as a partner—
defines the latter as an autonomous entity that pre-
serves certain properties referenced to itself: a comfort
zone (i.e. an ideal situation where it ‘‘feels’’ better than
in any other), a set of activities that it does for self-
preservation or maintenance, independent of whatever
other entities (e.g. humans) are doing, and a set of
mechanisms whereby its internal configuration and the
252
external environment are manipulated to regain (if lost)
a new situation in the aforementioned comfort zone. In
this sense, we share Gemeinboeck’s (2017) view when
she states:
I believe that this [machine] ‘‘becoming of agency’’ pro-
mises to be the more transformative the more we embrace
the differences (relative to humans) of machinic embodi-
ment, movement and, consequently, cognition. Rather
than investing in robots to make them more human, we
need to investigate the ecology of relations by which a
robot becomes an affective assemblage. That is, we need
to investigate how sociomaterial relations and dynamics
are produced and activated and, furthermore, how alter-
native, posthumanist notions of intelligence are spawned
from these (always material) interdependencies. (p. 3)
From an engineering perspective, it would seem that
a partner-machine, as described above, would waste
time and energy performing tasks that do not contrib-
ute to any useful goal. But, in reality, such a machine
would have advantages over—let us call them—pur-
pose-built machines in the following situations:
1. Unexpected results. Partner-machines can produce
unexpected and useful results. In this sense, we can call
them ‘‘creative.’’ There are tasks when machines would
be more useful if they contribute with unexpected
results to a multiagent effort, such as coming up with
a new logo for a brand. A graphic tool to design the
logo is useful, but a tool that gives a variety of unex-
pected ideas for the logo would be more useful.
2. Partner-machines are, by their own nature, self-
configurable and self-adaptive. These properties are
very useful because they can evolve and tune to spe-
cific contexts and situations. Furthermore, they can
report back possible issues that prevent them from
continuing their adaptation (if there are any) and
hence prompt the reevaluation of the original task
or the environment.
This kind of approach makes it easier to understand
the tension between creativity and stability of a system,
as well as the need for flexible restrictions and nonfor-
malizable rules to preserve the individual and social
integrity of the creative subject.
Other research projects have delved into the ques-
tion of embodiment and adaptation in relation to CC.
The Curious Whispers project (Chee, 2011; Saunders,
Chee, & Gemeinboeck, 2013) experiments with societies
of mobile robots and people who can compose and play
back songs that the whole group can hear. The songs
are created by adapting songs heard from other robots
so they seem to show some degree of adaptation and
integration. They follow a reward function of curiosity
that allows them to discern among possibilities. The
idea is to explore the interaction and communication
Adaptive Behavior 26(5)
between agents and their environment as an essential
precondition to study creativity. The behavior of the
singing robots described coincides with our description
of the first stages of interaction between LISp1 and
SHE, the mutual recognition phase where they find out
what is out there. For future work, Saunders (2012) sug-
gests to take an autopoietic approach which, as we dis-
cussed earlier, is different from transduction.
Another interesting and related project is Luc Steels
(2015). In this project, agents experiment with words
and their referents as part of language games to find
common meanings and develop a shared lexicon. The
languages evolved over time in this fashion show the
emergence of interesting properties of human lan-
guages. However, whereas this work explores the emer-
gence of communication among agents, these do not
include individuation processes, either human or non-
human of the kind we suggest in this article.
These works are similar in spirit and strategy to
study creativity to our own. They stress the importance
of embodiment, interaction with other agents, and the
environment to determine internal organization.
Further investigation and an implementation of SHE
will allow us to compare approaches and experience.
Summing up, our first aim in this article was to
acknowledge that there are common features that allow
us to talk about human and nonhuman creative pro-
cesses and abilities, and realize that creativity is a hetero-
geneous and widespread activity. Relating creativity to
individuation or ways of being and collective problem-
solving strategies or amplifications makes much more
clear the expected role of technologies in producing resi-
lience or helping to cope with emergent ways of being.
Machines are part of evolution, discovery, and path-
breaking problem-solving strategies; they can thus be a
source of inspiration, understanding, esthetic enjoy-
ment, self-transformation, and definition of our own
interests and proposals. As Simondon (1958/2001)
noted, there is no way to understand contemporary cul-
ture and its dynamics without considering machines as
something that—‘‘as life and with life’’—is opposed to
‘‘the leveling of all things that would deprive the
Universe of its power for change’’ (p. 15).
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD
Santiago Negrete-Yankelevich https://orcid.org/0000-
0002-6558-6538
Valverde-Pérez and Negrete-Yankelevich
Notes
1. Simondon’s work has recently attracted the attention of
those scholars interested in the possibilities of relational
ontologies for providing a framework that allows a bet-
ter understanding of the dynamical ontogenetic co-
determination that emerges from the relations between
humans and nonhumans in several fields, from mathe-
matics and morphogenesis (see Sarti, Montanari, &
Galofaro, 2015) to political philosophy (Bardin, 2015)
and sociology of science (Latour, 2013; Stengers, 2004).
However, few scholars have attempted to explore the
implications of Simondon’s approach for understanding
artificial beings’ creativity (see Gemeinboeck, 2017). The
implications of Simondon’s theory on an affect theory
have been developed from cultural studies, for example
by Massumi (1995), and social sciences, specially in those
areas concerned with embodied subjectivity, enactment
and technology. A good example is Tucker’s (2013) work
on the effects of informational surveillance on extended
individuation. In a similar vein to this work, Ash (2014)
develops the notion of ‘‘inorganically organized affects’’
from Simondon.
2. Simondon’s notion of individuation as process
bears many resemblances with autopoietic enactivism
(Thompson, 2011, p. 116; also Di Paolo, 2016).
Differences are, nonetheless, important. Thompson
(2007) explicitly supported Moreno and Barandiaran’s
(2004) claim about the ontological priority of the indi-
vidual. This position can eventually lead to an overem-
phasizing of the individual as a self-conserving product
to the detriment of individuation as process, which is the
main point in Simondon’s approach (Protevi, 2011). It
can also led to dualism (Thompson, 2011), which is also
alien to his perspective (Stielger, 2009).
3. This is a very important difference between transduction
and conceptual blending, since the latter is focused on
abstracting features from two separate concepts to find
a way to instantiate the abstracted versions in such a
way that renders a new, combined concept (Turner &
Fauconnier, 2002). The abstraction process necessarily
carries a loss of information.
4. Most people try to arrange the sticks on a table until
they realize that the solution is a pyramid.
5. Because Mr Hardy was already near the lower end of the
ladder.
6. This makes computers more robust but also more com-
plex. Among other reasons, because as much as we are
the result or the coproduction of material affordances
and multiple long-term interactions with living organ-
isms, we are coproducers of the material environment
that makes them possible. Their physical activity and
affordances are the other side of our own way of being
in the world with other multiple kinds of beings. Even if
this does not, as we said, reduce machines to mere tools-
for-others (or its uses), this proximity guarantees the
mutual (maybe minimal, in some respects) intelligibility
of the different individuals that share a common world
or space. There are, in any case, shared rules to orient
the creative (or transductive) act. Nothing that is part of
our surroundings is radically alien. Posing the question
of creativity in this framework means that there is no
253
such thing as an ‘‘autonomous creator,’’ and that creativ-
ity emerges as a result where none of the parts involved
is a passive element. In this sense, creativity implies cre-
ation in a deep ontological sense.
7. Harman’s (2002) ontology is constructed under the pre-
mise that ‘‘the being of the tool is utterly determinate in
its specific relation to any entity it encounters’’ (pp. 30–
31; emphasis in the original). Exploring the creative pro-
cess, we assume that there is a moment when this mutual
determination somehow needs to take specific shape by
exploring the limits of the agents’ plasticity, which
requires that some form of individuation be always pres-
ent, since absorption in equipment totality will impede
any possibility of thematizing the creative moment. So
we depart here from his theory by sustaining that in the
creative process, the being of the tool is ‘‘indeterminately
determinate in its specific relation to a (set of) entity(-
ies) it encounters.’’
8. Simondon’s notion of ‘‘internal resonance,’’ that we
think has links with Hacking’s notion of ‘‘looping’’
somehow, implies that the self-reflexive and transforma-
tive moment is projected to the others as the inherent
tension of a state of metastability.
9. Thus, even kinds of art like ‘‘raw art’’ or ‘‘art brut’’
require a critical viewer that makes them acceptable and
valuable. Other examples are found in conceptual art.
However, there are times when somatic TK is ignored,
as in the cases where the accomplishment of the creative
product would entail extreme pain or death to one of
the agents, jeopardizing evaluation and manifesting the
robustness of TK rules, as in Chris Burden’s early work,
see http://www.ubu.com/film/burden_selected.html.
Disgust and extreme fear always prevents evaluation of
a work from the point of view of its creativity.
10. For example, sudden hearing loss in one ear is often
only experienced when a telephone is used with the
affected ear.
11. From our point of view, however, this connects collec-
tive and somatic-limit TK, preventing a neat differentia-
tion between them. However, the difference is still useful
because, as we will see, there are different degrees of col-
lective and somatic TK in different human/nonhuman
systems.
12. For a philosophical and cultural implications of this
change of view toward a redefinition of use and mean-
ing, see Agamben (2006).
13. The ‘‘lure of feeling’’ is considered by Whitehead ‘‘the
germ of mind’’ (see Whitehead, 1927–1928/1978, p. 85).
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About the Authors

Nuria Valverde-Pérez holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
She is a professor of Humanities at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Cuajimalpa. Her
research is focused in the history and philosophy of technologies. Her work explores how instru-
ments and epistemic practices produce both standardized and systemic accounts of the world and
the environment, leading to emergent and historical ontologies. Her most recent project aims to
analyze the ways in which technological artifacts relates to vulnerability production, understood
as an inherent asset.
256 Adaptive Behavior 26(5)

Santiago Negrete-Yankelevich is a lecturer in Computer Science in the Communication Science

and Design Division at Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. He holds an MSc
in IT and a PhD and in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh, UK and a
bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Mexico’s National University (U.N.A.M.). His current
research interests include creative computing for New Media and the impact of experimentation
on this medium on the ideas behind software design. In particular, he has focused on the role
improvisation and cultural contexts and practices play in building textual and visual narratives.
He frequently participates in art projects where he develops software for interactive installations.