10,000 Bowls of Oatmeal Problem
The 10,000 bowls of Oatmeal problem examines a feature of generative art, the perceptual uniqueness – the amount of distinction between artifacts and perceptual differentiation – the ability to perceive two artifacts as different.
The lack of perceptual uniqueness does not necessarily hurt a project since depending upon the context a lack of perceptual uniqueness among a collection of artifacts can benefit or hurt the collection. For example, a game focused upon collecting an infinite number of creatures would be harmed by a lack of perceptual uniqueness since the game’s main draw is the infinite number of unique creatures. While the promised variety theoretically exists, but since the user can’t quickly distinguish said variety, it doesn’t really exist. On the other hand, procedurally generated crowd that wanders the background would benefit from a lack of perceptual uniqueness and merely having perceptual differentiation. The slight variation between each character would provide subtly uniqueness to each background character without causing them to stand out.
In order to increase perceptual uniqueness, the author recommends we generate objects that each have emphasized characteristics humans can easily distinguish.