Electric Sheep
Encyclopedia
Distributed computing
Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...
project for animating and evolving fractal flame
Fractal flame
Fractal flames are a member of the iterated function system class of fractals created by Scott Draves in 1992. Draves' open-source code was later ported into Adobe After Effects graphics software and translated into the Apophysis fractal flame editor....
s, which are in turn distributed to the networked computers, which display them as a screensaver
Screensaver
A screensaver is a type of computer program initially designed to prevent phosphor burn-in on CRT and plasma computer monitors by blanking the screen or filling it with moving images or patterns when the computer is not in use...
.
Process
The process is transparent to the casual user, who can simply install the software as a screensaver. Alternatively, the user may become more involved with the project, manually creating sheep (video files of animated fractal flames) for upload to the server. As the screensaver entertains the user, their computer is also used for rendering commercial projects, sales of which keep the servers and developers running.There are about 500,000 active users (monthly uniques).
According to Mitchell Whitelaw in his Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life, "On the screen they are luminous, twisting, elastic shapes, abstract tangles and loops of glowing filaments."
The name "Electric Sheep" is taken from the title of Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick first published in 1968. The main plot follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter of androids, while the secondary plot follows John Isidore, a man of sub-normal intelligence who befriends some of the...
. The title mirrors the nature of the project: computers (androids) who have started running the screensaver begin rendering (dreaming) the fractal movies (sheep
Counting sheep
Counting sheep is a mental exercise used in some cultures as a means of lulling oneself to sleep.In most depictions of the activity, the practitioner envisions an endless series of identical white sheep jumping over a fence, while counting them as they do so...
).
The sheep motif is carried over into other aspects of the project: the 100 or so sheep stored on the server at any time is referred to as 'the flock'; creating a new fractal by interpolating or combining the sheep's fractal code with that of another sheep is called mating/breeding; changes to the code are called mutations, etc.
The parameters that generate these movies (sheep) can be created in a few ways: they can be created and submitted by members of the electricsheep mailing list, members of the mailing list can download the parameters of existing sheep and tweak them, or sheep can be mated together automatically by the server or manually by server admins (nicknamed shepherds).
Users may vote on sheep that they like or dislike, and this voting is used for the genetic algorithm
Genetic algorithm
A genetic algorithm is a search heuristic that mimics the process of natural evolution. This heuristic is routinely used to generate useful solutions to optimization and search problems...
which generates new sheep. Each movie is a fractal flame
Fractal flame
Fractal flames are a member of the iterated function system class of fractals created by Scott Draves in 1992. Draves' open-source code was later ported into Adobe After Effects graphics software and translated into the Apophysis fractal flame editor....
with several of its parameters changed over time
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
. The individual frames of which these movies consist are rendered using 'spare' processing cycles from idle computers on the distributed network of those running the screensaver application, and finished sheep (in the form of .avi files) are distributed to the network.
All sheep parameters and movies are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution license
Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S...
and automatically downloaded by the screen saver.
The screensaver was created and released as Free Software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
by Scott Draves
Scott Draves
Scott Draves is the inventor of Fractal Flames and the leader of the distributed computing project Electric Sheep. He also invented patch-based texture synthesis and published the first implementation of this class of algorithms...
in 1999 and continues to be developed by him and a team of about five engineers.
The beta version differs from the old versions. It has a new logo, higher quality sheep and other features.