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Self-expression is central to mental well-being and mental health therapy. Art therapy offers a wide range of expressive mechanisms, allowing individuals to process their emotions when traditional therapies prove unsuccessful. However, a lack of expertise or comfort with artistic expression, along with cost and waiting times, may hinder one's ability to receive needed mental health support. Creative machines can offer novel therapeutic approaches enabling the bereaved to engage in creative expression as and when needed. In this paper, we apply a co-creative songwriting system, ALYSIA, as a new form of therapy for those who had recently suffered the loss of a loved one. We evaluate the utility of this creative system in aiding bereaved individuals through user testing. The utility of collaborative creative systems for adaptation to bereavement is discussed and may have implications for other therapeutic applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work proposes a methodology for conducting field work in computational creativity, referring to field work as the effort of actively making a system or its artifacts widely accessible outside the academic world. Field work aims to study how creative computer agents and/or their products influence society, and how the dynamics that arise from the interaction between people and those inventive machines or their artifacts can inform the design of computational creativity methods, systems and artefacts. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences making our systems ALYSIA and MEXICA broadly available. In the case of ALYSIA, the system itself was made accessible, whereas MEXICA's artifacts (stories) were shared through a traditionally published book for a broad readership. We then propose a five step methodology for effectively conducting field work in Computational Creativity. The participation of the computational creativity community is essential to test and enrich this methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The paper surveys and compares clusterability tests. • New clusterability tests are proposed. • Type I error and power of clusterability methods are reported for simulated data. • Clusterablity tests are applied to well-known non-simulated data. • Provide guidelines to help users to select among clusterability tests. Abstract Clustering is an essential data mining tool that aims to discover inherent cluster structure in data. For most applications, applying clustering is only appropriate when cluster structure is present. As such, the study of clusterability, which evaluates whether data possesses such structure, is an integral part of cluster analysis. However, methods for evaluating clusterability vary radically, making it challenging to select a suitable measure. In this paper, we perform an extensive comparison of measures of clusterability and provide guidelines that clustering users can reference to select suitable measures for their applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Properties that help solve the clustering users dilemma. • Weighted properties formally differentiate clustering methods. • A formal classification highlights advantages of center-based clustering techniques. This paper makes a major step towards addressing a long-standing challenge in cluster analysis, known as the user's dilemma , which is the problem of selecting an appropriate clustering algorithm for a specific task. A formal approach for addressing this challenge relies on the identification of succinct, user-friendly properties that capture formal differences amongst clustering techniques. While helpful for gaining insight into the nature of clustering paradigms, there is a theory-practice gap that has so far limited the utility of this approach: Formal properties typically highlight advantages of classical linkage-based algorithms, while practical experience shows that center-based methods are preferable for many applications. We present simple new properties that delineate core differences between common clustering paradigms and overcome this theory-practice gap. The properties we present give a formal understanding of the advantages of center-based approaches for some applications and insight into when different clustering paradigms should be used. These properties address how sensitive algorithms are to changes in element frequencies, which we capture in a generalized setting where every element is associated with a real-valued weight. To complement extensive formal analysis, we discuss how these properties can be applied in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The cross-section enumeration problem is to list all words of length in a regular language in lexicographical order. The enumeration problem is to list the first words in according to radix order. We present an algorithm for the cross-section enumeration problem that is linear in , where is the output size. We provide a detailed analysis of the asymptotic running time of our algorithm and that of known algorithms for both enumeration problems. We discuss some shortcomings of the enumeration algorithm found in the Grail computation package. In the practical domain, we modify Mäkinen’s enumeration algorithm to get an algorithm that is usually the most efficient in practice. We performed an extensive performance analysis of the new and previously known enumeration and cross-section enumeration algorithms and found when each algorithm is preferable. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract PoeTryMe is a poetry generation system that autonomously produces poems from a set of initial parameters. After using it, creative writers and other users of this system expressed the desire to partake in the creative process by directly interacting with PoeTryMe. This paper is motivated by the previous impressions. It illustrates some of the challenges of automatic poetry generation, highlights limitations of PoeTryMe, and reports on recent efforts to address user feedback and provide alternative ways of using this system. First, making some functionalities available via a web API enabled their exploitation by other systems. Those include the generation of single lines as well as retrieval of related words, allowing for additional constraints on the number of syllables, sentiment and rhyme. On top of this API, a co-creative interface, Co-PoeTryMe, has been developed. Co-PoeTryMe allows users to either start from scratch or from a generated draft. Extensive editing functionality has been incorporated, in particular, allowing lines and words to be switched or replaced by newly generated alternatives. Co-PoeTryMe, its interface and the co-creative process for producing poetry are described, along with a user study that provided useful feedback. Users pointed out the strengths of this new system, including its capacities in providing inspiration, and giving the user the ability to customize an existing draft and visualize the changes, but also pointed out weaknesses, primarily by identifying potential improvements in the user interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]