Towards Creative Information Exploration Based on Koestler’s Concept of Bisociation

Creative information exploration

refers to a novel framework for exploring large volumes of heterogeneous information. In particular, creative information exploration seeks to discover new, surprising and valuable relationships in data that would not be revealed by conventional information retrieval, data mining and data analysis technologies. While our approach is inspired by work in the field of computational creativity, we are particularly interested in a model of creativity proposed by Arthur Koestler in the 1960s. Koestler’s model of creativity rests on the concept of

bisociation

. Bisociative thinking occurs when a problem, idea, event or situation is perceived simultaneously in two or more “matrices of thought” or domains. When two matrices of thought interact with each other, the result is either their

fusion

in a novel intellectual synthesis or their

confrontation

in a new aesthetic experience. This article discusses some of the foundational issues of computational creativity and bisociation in the context of creative information exploration.