The science of design usually conceives of AI as a set of tools for structuring the process, or planning, or optimizing [20,105,13]. Rarely does the computer explore a space of designs, and in doing so, it is generally following a set of precise rules, so the machine is doing little else than repeating a series of mechanical steps, faster than a human could. Creativity is usually considered to lay outside the realm of what computers can do.
Evolutionary Design (ED), the creation of designs by computers using evolutionary methods [11] is a new research area with an enormous potential. Examples of ED work are evolution of abstract shapes [12] or optimization of one part or component [20,120]. The present work is different, for we are proposing to let the evolutionary process take care of the entire design process by means of recombination of available components and interaction with a physics simulation.
Inasmuch as Artificial Intelligence is an elusive concept-- it seems that every new challenge that computers solve, becomes non-intelligent by definition2.2, so is ``artificial creativity''. We claim that the present work is in fact a form of artificial creativity, albeit restricted, whose designs are unexpected, surprising, amusing -- and they work.