Winners Announced in Avon’s First Computational Art Competition
Earlier this month, computer science faculty members Evan Sayles and Melanie Dexter announced the winners of the school’s first-ever computational art competition. Sasha Zyuzin ’24 took first place in the animation category, while Alex Grant ’24 topped the static image category.
To begin, what is computational art? Essentially, it is a piece of art created entirely through coding. Students were not doing any freehand drawing, but instead generating a design with math and computer programming. The intended end product, however, was a visually appealing piece of art.
“It’s not just about the number of lines of code they’re writing,” Sayles explains. “It also has to look interesting. The students had to create something that was technically impressive, but also graphically pleasing.”
The contest was announced prior to March break and was open to all students. Students could choose between two categories: a static image or an animation/video. The winning submission in each category would earn a $50 store credit at the Hawk’s Nest school store.
For Alex, a day student from Avon, the prize was admittedly his main motivation for entering the competition, but he also saw it as an opportunity to build on his coding skills. “I thought it would be a challenge, and fun to see if I could win. I just wanted to give it my best shot.”
Alex’s submission is a static image of a lion made up of simple shapes (See left). To create it, he first mapped out the design on a piece of physical paper before spending a few hours translating that into code. “It was pretty tedious and hard, but ended up being worth it. Winning feels good.”
Alex says he is glad to have the skill, and he enjoys computer science, but doesn’t currently plan on pursuing coding much further than in classes and competitions here at Avon. That is not the case for the winner of the animation category, however, who says he knew he wanted a career that involves coding since he was eight years old.
Sasha left Russia and came to Avon in January with an already established foundation in coding. He is adept at multiple programming languages including C/C++, Python, and JavaScript. He completed the introductory computer science class in just over a week before being enrolled in AP Computer Science. He hopes to continue studying computer science and programming at either Princeton, MIT, or Carnegie Mellon in pursuit of a career in cybersecurity.
“I think cybersecurity is more valuable nowadays. The world needs people to protect and provide security,” Sasha says.
Sasha’s entry into the competition was a two-minute long video showing a series of 600 progressively smaller circles moving in accordance with the Fourier series, a complex mathematical function. These circles continue to move based on mathematical instructions inputted by Sasha to eventually draw an image. The final image was a headshot of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. Click below to see the final product.
“Essentially, I animated complex math,” Sasha explains. “And I chose Pushkin because I’m a big fan of Russian literature, especially poetry.”
The final product was a result of 10-12 hours of searching through programming libraries, doing difficult math, and completing some pretty extensive coding. It proved to be a worthy winner of the first ever computational art competition, and was well worth it for Sasha.
“We didn’t have school competitions in Russia, so this is my first one. It feels nice that I came to Avon and already won something.”
Mr. Sayles says that with the success of this inaugural competition, he plans to hold it again in the future. “I’d love to keep this going, maybe even expand it. I’m very curious to see what else they can do.”