Student artists awarded Code+Art prizes

Santhosh Radhakrishnan’s data visualization artwork “Code_Climate” took first prize in the second annual NCSU Libraries Code+Art Student Visualization Contest, sponsored by Christie Digital Systems. Student artists were honored at a ceremony at the James B. Hunt Jr. Library, where their work will be displayed on four video walls through April 24 and added to the library’s permanent collection of media for the walls.

Focusing an aesthetic lens on the increasing amount of data we encounter, the contest was open to submissions in data art, animations, procedural environments, interactive visualizations, and algorithmic generative art. Students created visualizations for a variety of large video walls at Hunt Library, including the 20-foot-wide Art Wall and the large curved screen in the iPearl Immersion Theater.

Radhakrishnan, a graduate student in Aerospace Engineering, took the top prize of $1000. Ryan West and Augustus Vieweg, both juniors studying Electrical Engineering, claimed second prize ($500) for their “NCSUTwitteRed.” Computer Engineering junior Lucas Rumney’s “Spiral's Edge” claimed third ($250). An honorable mention went to a team of undergraduates studying Industrial, Environmental, and Graphic Design.

Radhakrishnan’s winning “Code_Climate” uses shape and color to display global temperature change data from 1880 to 2016. The anomaly in temperature for a particular year in comparison to the 1951­-1980 average determines the direction of strokes onscreen. Additionally, blue indicates a cooler global climate and red a hotter global climate. Judges were impressed with Radhakrishnan's elegant usage of color and design, as well as his integration of climate data.

“It’s a reminder about changes in global climate,” Radhakrishnan says. “It’s something we need to keep in our minds but it’s taken for granted sometimes. I am conveying a means of people taking the message more seriously. So I made something bright with beautiful colors so it would stand out. But it conveys a grim message.”

A self-admitted coding novice, Radhakrishnan had to teach himself the openFrameworks coding language to make “Code_Climate.” The process has piqued his interest in interactive media, particularly its applications in the classroom.

West and Vieweg created the “NCSUTwitteRed” application to measure school spirit through images on five different NC State­ Twitter accounts. It analyzes the amount of Wolfpack red in images posted to those Twitter accounts, rendering all other colors in grayscale to highlight the red.

Rumney’s “Spiral’s Edge” animates different 3D models and structures based on composite sine waves--a simple pattern that appears in almost every discipline within mathematics or engineering. Visually beautiful, complex images emerge when constructive and destructive interference is introduced into a simple sine wave function.

“Skybox,” by the team of Lenhardt, Webber, Yingling, Rozakis, and Hyde, is a procedural environment generator. This simulation uses a perlin noise algorithm to generate a series of biomes, or graphical environments. The algorithm alters the terrain and placement of the environmental objects, conveying unique possibilities with implications for game design.

Student winners:
1st prize: Santhosh Radhakrishnan, “Code_Climate”
2nd prize: Ryan West and Augustus Vieweg, “NCSUTwitteRed”
3rd prize: Lucas Rumney, “Spiral's Edge”
Honorable mention: W. Conor Lenhardt, Ben Webber, Parker Yingling, Peter Rozakis, Nick Hyde, “Skybox”

For more information about Code+Art, contact Alison Blaine, ablaine@ncsu.edu.