Priming creativity through improvisation on an adaptive musical instrument

Abstract

Creativity is a crucial skill in today's knowledge economy, and creativity support tools are a valuable and important area of human-computer interaction research. Passive affective priming has been shown to be an effective means for enhancing creativity. Based on music cognition research, we propose music improvisation as an active and participatory cognitive prime for boosting creative ability. To make music improvisation accessible to all individuals regardless of music expertise, we present a novel instrument with an adaptive interface that facilitates music creation. We demonstrate that improvising music with our adaptive instrument provides an immediate boost to creative ability, even for people without musical training. We quantify the efficacy of interface adaptation techniques for enabling creative expression.