Spellburst: A Node-based Interface for Exploratory Creative Coding with Natural Language Prompts
This addresses the problem of effortful semantic-to-syntax translation for artists in digital art creation, representing an incremental improvement in computational creativity tools.
The paper tackles the challenge of translating high-level semantic ideas into program syntax for artists in creative coding by introducing Spellburst, an LLM-powered node-based environment that enables exploratory generative art through prompt-based interactions and dynamic interfaces, with evaluation showing its potential to enhance creative practices.
Creative coding tasks are often exploratory in nature. When producing digital artwork, artists usually begin with a high-level semantic construct such as a "stained glass filter" and programmatically implement it by varying code parameters such as shape, color, lines, and opacity to produce visually appealing results. Based on interviews with artists, it can be effortful to translate semantic constructs to program syntax, and current programming tools don't lend well to rapid creative exploration. To address these challenges, we introduce Spellburst, a large language model (LLM) powered creative-coding environment. Spellburst provides (1) a node-based interface that allows artists to create generative art and explore variations through branching and merging operations, (2) expressive prompt-based interactions to engage in semantic programming, and (3) dynamic prompt-driven interfaces and direct code editing to seamlessly switch between semantic and syntactic exploration. Our evaluation with artists demonstrates Spellburst's potential to enhance creative coding practices and inform the design of computational creativity tools that bridge semantic and syntactic spaces.