Please help clarify the field of interests

[Wirawit Rueopas]

Dear CC researchers,

I’m just graduated with Computer engineering and currently looking for Masters/PhD programs in Computer science. However, I’m still unclear about my area of interests and whether it could be classified as computational creativity/AI. This is my attempt to describe it:

It is about visual aesthetics. About how composition, shape, colour, and other elements would effect the final result of an image. This could be simply described as finding rules, or computational model for visual beauty. It may draw some theories from psychology and human visual perception. The objective is to produce good-looking visuals, or preferably point out where and why it is not.

I’m not quite sure if this is in which domain. 

These are my observations of possible fields and their parts that might intersect with this interests:

1. Computational Creativity (CC): creative process of computers, visual arts
   
2. Genetic and Evolutionary Art (GA): aesthetics measure, especially topics of interests described in DETA track of GECCO
   
3. Media Art: art using technology as a tool
   

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These are my doubts on each of the field above:

1. CC: It seems to me that the main focus of CC is how creativity works in general, and focus less on domain-specific quality of artefacts of the system.
   
2. GA: All paper titles of the track focuses on game. Moreover, generative or evolutionary art seems to me like experiments to make art. So, is a final result still require human intervention?
   
3. Media Art: Though I'm quite sure that it will not focus on the computational model for visual beauty, I think it does open some opportunities to think about it.
   

Trying to put it more shortly, I think it would be about finding a computational model of human visual perception focusing on evaluating visual aesthetics. And my main question is, which of the fields would you think best describe this interest? Feel free to suggest If you know other fields that might be more suitable.

Also, I've noticed that under CC, research on music is much easier to find and more common than research on visual art. Do you know of any labs/groups that focus particularly on visual art?

I would appreciate it if you could clarify some points or provide a suggestion. Please correct me on anything if I’m wrong and point out any resources for me to study further.

Best Regards,

Wirawit