Electric Sheep is a windows, mac and linux screensaver that downloads and plays highly complex and very beautiful fractal animations (sheep).
Each animation is based on a genetic algorithum - sheep breed and mutate with each generation, and new sheep pop up every day or so. We humans are able to influence the evolution of this artificial species, by voting for the best or worst sheep. The better looking sheep breed and mutate, "hence the flock evolves to please its global audience."
The animations loop seamlessly, and just when you've become transfixed by one, it smoothly morphs into another sheep.
As more people run the screen saver, the sheep have more computing power to graze on. Over the last year or so they have grown in resolution, and have become more colourful and intricate.
The software is open source, and the sheep can be freely used under the creative commons licence (hence they also make great VJ material).
No comments:
Post a Comment