Homage to Philippe K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". It works when your computer is idle and download new "sheep" from the server. I downloaded it yesterday and have already a "flock" of sheep on my HD. Eye-catching, mind blowing fractal animations.

I was looking forward to see some cool fractals but I never got this to work. It always got stuck saying it was waiting to download the first sheep...

The first "sheep" download takes some time but then the thing begins to work very smoothly. Just leave your computer idle for a few hours, allowing it to get the firrst step, then you'll see what happens. It's been only a few days since I installed it and I've already 7 very cool fractal animations. The engine uses your CPU when your computer is idle; sharing the rendering work with thousands of computers and you'll eventually have lots of crazy animations. Besides, they come in MPEG-2 format and are kept in a folder you specified (sheep cache).

A little patience and you'll like the result.

Hey, (weeks later) you're right...this screensaver is pretty awesome! Sure took a while to get started, though. And there is some gloriously retro, late-90s feel to the graphics, but the results are so beautiful, I love it all the same. Best screensaver I've come across.

Lesson: always trust Invictus.

Thanks kore.... And glad to hear you're happy with Electric Sheep.

does this make your system vulnerable in some way?

Vulnerable to mesmerizing, full-screen, colorful, swirling, 3D, starburst, fractal animations (with ridiculous cartoon "sheep" interface)? Yes.

I think the friendly open source geeks that wrote it have your best interests in mind. But even if it is some insidious, backdoor, internet scam to harvest credit card numbers or something...your screen will look so pretty while it's happening!

I'm enjoying this too, I don't have many sheeps but most of them are beautiful and I could waste some time simply by seeing and admiring them.

Whatever you do, don't start counting the sheep, or it'll be all over. Zzzzzzz....

I don't think it's a vulnerability to your security. The recent version works via bittorrent.

Check out Sheepwatcher.

This little app shows & downloads the screensaver, while not in screensaver mode, so you're able to use your computer, while downloading some more sheep.

Pretty handy if you want more sheep or if you want to get hypnotized while doing work...

errata: ...downloads the sheep ; not the screensaver ...

I did a whole series of the Electric Sheep awhile ago. You can find it in my ART collection folders tagged art programs, art , artists

Oh, yeah. The program the artist invented is there too.

great clip.
thx for the pointer. Ii missed that one - twice ...