The role of embodiment in creativity has not been addressed in depth in the literature, and has been considered even less so in connection with Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a few exceptions. Still, the perception of the embodiment of the creator is generally deemed a key aspect of the observer's response to an artwork. If true, this poses interesting challenges for AI systems attempting to generate creative art, as they are inherently disembodied. There are two ways that artificial art may approach embodiment, should that be necessary to achieve audience appreciation. First, a physical machine may carry out the AI system's artistic intent. Alternately, the physicality of the humans interacting with the AI system can be highlighted, for instance by calling the attention to the embodied experience of coding the underlying algorithms, of selecting algorithmic outputs from the latent space, and so on. In this one-and-a-half-day workshop, we explored the impact of embodiment on the perception of creativity through a combination of performances by digital illustrators and artists working with generative methods and contributions from researchers interested in the role of embodiment in the judgment of the aesthetic value of an artifact and in the evaluation of the creativity of the process behind its creation. The structure of the workshop included, for the first day, a combination of performances by the digital illustrator Renaud Chabrier and the generative-methods artist Daniel Berio. During the second day of the workshop, contributions from researchers interested in the role of embodiment in the judgment of the aesthetic value of an artifact were presented. We considered the philosophical underpinnings of embodiment, humanity, and artistry, welcoming perspectives from disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, visual art, and computer science. The day concluded with the keynote by Aaron Hertzmann, joined with ICCC'22.1
Acknowledgments The workshop is part of the project ‘The Role of Embodiment in the Perception of Human & Artificial Creativity’, led by Caterina Moruzzi and Laura Herman, and funded by the Intersectoral Cooperation Programme of the Institute for Advanced Study for Junior Researchers, University of Konstanz.
Renaud Chabrier’s participation was funded by the Hi!Paris institute of IP Paris, through Marie-Paule Cani’s fellowship on CREATIVE AI). The code of the performance was created with Processing 3.0, thanks to the Processing Foundation.
We thank all the artists, speakers, and participants to the workshop for the fruitful discussions and for having made this workshop possible. We also thank the organizers of ICCC’22 for hosting us in the program of the conference.