Technical report available (Letter Spirit)

[Gary McGraw]

The following technical report has been placed in the neuroprose
archive as mcgraw.letter_spirit.ps.Z and is available via ftp
(from 128.146.8.52).

			Letter Spirit:
Recognition and Creation of Letterforms Based on Fluid Concepts

by Gary McGraw, Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition TR 61

Although this work is not really connectionism per se, the approach it
represents has much in common with connectionist ideas.  Here is an
abstract:

The Letter Spirit project is an attempt to model central aspects of
human creativity on a computer.  We believe that creativity flourishes
in the mind because of the flexible and context-sensitive nature of
concepts (which we call fluid concepts to reflect this essential
plasticity.)  We believe that creativity is a by-product of the
fluidity of concepts, and that a reasonable model of conceptual
fluidity can shed much light on creativity.  Letter Spirit explores
creativity through the art of letter design.  The aim of Letter Spirit
is to model how the 26 lowercase letters of the roman alphabet can be
rendered in a uniform style.  The program will start with one or more
seed letters representing a style, and create the rest of the letters
in such a way that they share the same style, or spirit.  Letter
Spirit involves a blend of high-level perception and conceptual play
that will allow it to create in a cognitively plausible fashion.
High-level perception involves processing information to the level of
meaning by accessing concepts and making sense of sensory data at a
conceptual level.
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The paper is also available via ftp from cogsci.indiana.edu as
/pub/mcgraw.letter_spirit.ps

E-mail versions may be available to interested parties without ftp access.
Send inquiries to gem at cogsci.indiana.edu (or mcgrawg at moose.cs.indiana.edu).