Abstract
This paper explores the cognitive aspects of artefactual creativity in new media art. Starting with a concept of combinatorial inventiveness which is central to artefactual creativity, we outline its manifestations in the arts and culture, leading to contemporary applications of the emerging technologies for transforming the existing ideas, relations and data into new artworks. In view of the diverse art production in this domain, we focus on generative methodologies, and discuss the poetic features of the exemplar art projects created primarily by processing the material from cinema, television and the Internet. These artworks blend procedural thinking with bricolage, leverage complex technical infrastructures, foster curiosity and encourage vigilance in our critical appreciation of the arts, technology, culture, society, and human nature. In closing of each section, we outline the theoretical considerations that can be abstracted from the examples, and elaborate on them in the concluding section in which we examine the artists’ motives and circumstances of analogizing, generating ideas and meaning making in relation with the cognitive implications of artefactual creativity.
Keywords: Artefactual Creativity, Artificial Intelligence, Combinatorial Inventiveness, Generative Art, New Media Art.