Electric sheep
| Electric sheep
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| Maintainer | Scott Draves |
| developer | Scott Draves |
| Current version | 3.0.1 (October 2017) |
| operating system | GNU / Linux , Mac OS X , Microsoft Windows , Android |
| programming language | C ++ |
| category | Screen saver |
| License | GPL |
| www.electricsheep.org | |
Electric Sheep is a screen saver in which the computer plays videos of animated fractal images and, together with all other computers on which the screen saver is running, participates in the complex calculation of newer fractal images and their animation. Since the computer z. Sometimes you can decide for yourself what the recalculated fractals will look like. It makes sense to call them the “dreams” of computers, or sheep , based on the novel androids dreaming of electric sheep? by Philip K. Dick (filmed as " Blade Runner "). Electric Sheep had half a million users in early 2011.
functionality
The screensaver plays more on the hard disk cached MPEG-2 animations with merging randomly generated fractal images , as sheep (Engl. Sheep are called). Every sheep has some kind of genetic code, a complex equation that mathematically describes its appearance and animation. While Electric Sheep is running on the computer, it connects to other computers on which this screen saver is currently running and these computers jointly use their free computing capacity to "think up" new sheep, to calculate ( render ) individual images of the animations and fully calculated animations exchange the sheep with other computers via BitTorrent .
Users can vote which sheep they like and which they don't. Beautiful sheep let the computers mutate further , trying to produce similarly designed animations, so to speak, to calculate the descendants or descendants of these sheep. Sheep, which are not well received by the users, will soon be deleted from the cache on the hard drive and the computers will stop developing and reproducing them. Users can also develop themselves and sheep for further continuation in the flock (Engl. Flock ) integrated.
Emergence
Building on iterated functional systems , Scott Draves developed so-called fractal flames (algorithm-generated fractal images and animations) in 1992 . Draves has published the software that could render Fractal Flames as open source on the Internet. Since home computers could only render images and animations with this software after a great deal of time, it was initially only used by companies for computer-generated special effects on mainframes. When SETI @ home knew how to use the coupled computing power of numerous home PCs for complex calculations in 1999 , Draves wrote Electric Sheep, a SETI @ home-like screen saver with which he could distribute the calculation of fractal flames to any number of computers.
At first, Draves wanted to leave the appearance of the fractal animations to the computer's “imagination” (ie to chance). However, the users and fans of his screensaver soon learned to modify the sheep's “genetic code” (i.e. the parameters of their definition equation) through trial and error so that more aesthetically pleasing animations were created. Draves decided to include his users' creations in the “sheep herd” gene pool .
Today's sheep are mostly designed by fractal graphics enthusiasts. The computers let them mutate and calculate smooth transitions from one animation to the other. The transition animations are a great source of inspiration and the basis for the sheep designers.
Since April 20, 2012 there is also a wallpaper version for Android .
photos
See also
literature
- Scott Draves: The Electric Sheep Screen-Saver . A Case Study in Aesthetic Evolution. In: Spotworks (Ed.): Applications of Evolutionary Computing, EvoWorkshops 2005 . EvoBIO, EvoCOMNET, EvoHOT, EvoIASP, EvoMUSART, and EvoSTOC, Lausanne, Switzerland, March 30 - April 1, 2005, Proceedings. No. 3449 . Springer, San Francisco 2005, ISBN 3-540-25396-3 , pp. 458–467 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-540-32003-6_46 (English, psu.edu [PDF; accessed April 22, 2012]).
Web links
- Project website
- Electric Sheep Wiki
- The Electric Sheep Screen Saver: A Case Study on Aesthetic Evolution (PDF file; 2.54 MB)
- FLAM3 - Draves' software for calculating fractal flames
- Thomas Dreher : History of Computer Art, chap. IV.3: Evolutionary Art
Individual evidence
- ↑ Emilio Gomariz: triangulation. Scott Draves - Special Post. January 14, 2011, accessed on April 21, 2012 (English): "We have half a million users now."