5 ms·

Electric sheep

74 points by shrikant 16y ago

srean 16y ago
If you like this, you should definitely checkout the gallery, the simple python source and all other beauties at Andrej Bauer's http://www.random-art.org/ http://www.random-art.org/. He has an interesting story of migrating from a ocaml + cduce implementation to one based on Django and javascript. The javascript source was generated by compiling the original Ocaml sources using Ocamljs. The newer version being based on javascript, one can run it in one's browser. For the story: http://math.andrej.com/2010/08/17/random-art-and-the-law-of-rotten-software/#more-541 http://math.andrej.com/2010/08/17/random-art-and-the-law-of-...
- joshu 16y ago
  Both grad students at cmu SCS at the same time, too
kayoone 16y ago
This is pretty awesome! The site seems to be a bit overloaded though, direct link to youtube video with description: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz2pThxf3YU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz2pThxf3YU Electric Sheep is a collaborative abstract artwork founded by Scott Draves. It's run by thousands of people all over the world, and can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers "sleep", the Electric Sheep comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as "sheep". The result is a collective "android dream", an homage to Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
algorias 16y ago
For those interested in creating their own fractals, I've written a GUI editor in python for doing just that: https://launchpad.net/fr0st https://launchpad.net/fr0st
Fargren 16y ago
I think the name misses the point Dick was making in the novel (and throughout a lot of his work). It's about what exactly makes us "human", and how maybe it's possible to create something find all the qualities that we believe define humanity outside of humans, thus taking value away from being humane, or maybe adding value to it. The question "Do androids dream with electric sheep?"is just an example of this. "Human is" is another excelent short story by Dick on the subject. The fractals are very nice though =)
- srean 16y ago
  Have never been more touched by any other science fiction movie. It lingered within my mind for days.
  - Fargren 16y ago
    The thing with Science Fiction is that it's hardly a genre. As Asimov shows in "The Caves of Steel", it's mor ofa set of conventions about setting and style that can be applied to basically any genre. So you have immensely varied works of sci-fi that have bassically no relation between one another. That leads to someone loving a work of science fiction, trying other science fiction looking for something similar, and fiding that there's nothing similar to what he liked in other works. But if you are searching for something similar to Bladerunner, a TV series of the same vein and tone would be Ergo Proxy.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - patrickyeon 16y ago
      > The thing with Science Fiction is that it's hardly a genre. As Asimov shows in "The CAves of Steel", it's mor ofa set of conventions about setting and style I respectfully disagree. Yes, a lot of writing gets lumped in as "science fiction" because it has space and robots and lasers, but you can look for science fiction as a genre. I define it as fiction that explores questions raised by developments in science and technology. "Do Androids..." was clearly sci-fi, dealing with questions about what it is to be human, but also about if we could create souls, etc. (As an aside, it's a direction of thought I really wish the new BSG would've focused more on, as opposed to mythology/political thriller) William Gibson has been consistently good with writing what I describe as science fiction. So was Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon, Diamond Age, even the System of the World trilogy). Conversely, Star Wars would not be considered science fiction, just fantasy with spaceships.
MikeCapone 16y ago
I'd definitely be running this if I wasn't turning my screen off when I'm not using the computer, and if I didn't rather spend my CPU cycle on scientific/medical distributed computing projects (BOINC Rosetta@home, primarily).
pak 16y ago
In case you are thinking of running this, it is fantastically memory/disk space expensive. The fractals are rendered as movies and saved to your disk.
spot 16y ago
Thanks, glad you all like it. This open source network is the popular side of my art. For a peek at the good stuff, see http://picasaweb.google.com/scottdraves/Presskit02# http://picasaweb.google.com/scottdraves/Presskit02# including the recent projections at MoMA. You can download a sample at 1080p: http://www.archive.org/details/HighFidelityDemo http://www.archive.org/details/HighFidelityDemo (control-click the quicktime link and save to your desktop, skip the embedded player).

74 points by shrikant 16y ago

srean 16y ago

If you like this, you should definitely checkout the gallery, the simple python source and all other beauties at Andrej Bauer's http://www.random-art.org/ http://www.random-art.org/. He has an interesting story of migrating from a ocaml + cduce implementation to one based on Django and javascript. The javascript source was generated by compiling the original Ocaml sources using Ocamljs. The newer version being based on javascript, one can run it in one's browser. For the story: http://math.andrej.com/2010/08/17/random-art-and-the-law-of-rotten-software/#more-541 http://math.andrej.com/2010/08/17/random-art-and-the-law-of-...

joshu 16y ago
Both grad students at cmu SCS at the same time, too

kayoone 16y ago

This is pretty awesome! The site seems to be a bit overloaded though, direct link to youtube video with description: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz2pThxf3YU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz2pThxf3YU Electric Sheep is a collaborative abstract artwork founded by Scott Draves. It's run by thousands of people all over the world, and can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers "sleep", the Electric Sheep comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as "sheep". The result is a collective "android dream", an homage to Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

algorias 16y ago

For those interested in creating their own fractals, I've written a GUI editor in python for doing just that: https://launchpad.net/fr0st https://launchpad.net/fr0st

Fargren 16y ago

I think the name misses the point Dick was making in the novel (and throughout a lot of his work). It's about what exactly makes us "human", and how maybe it's possible to create something find all the qualities that we believe define humanity outside of humans, thus taking value away from being humane, or maybe adding value to it. The question "Do androids dream with electric sheep?"is just an example of this. "Human is" is another excelent short story by Dick on the subject. The fractals are very nice though =)

srean 16y ago
Have never been more touched by any other science fiction movie. It lingered within my mind for days.
- Fargren 16y ago
  The thing with Science Fiction is that it's hardly a genre. As Asimov shows in "The Caves of Steel", it's mor ofa set of conventions about setting and style that can be applied to basically any genre. So you have immensely varied works of sci-fi that have bassically no relation between one another. That leads to someone loving a work of science fiction, trying other science fiction looking for something similar, and fiding that there's nothing similar to what he liked in other works. But if you are searching for something similar to Bladerunner, a TV series of the same vein and tone would be Ergo Proxy.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - patrickyeon 16y ago
    > The thing with Science Fiction is that it's hardly a genre. As Asimov shows in "The CAves of Steel", it's mor ofa set of conventions about setting and style I respectfully disagree. Yes, a lot of writing gets lumped in as "science fiction" because it has space and robots and lasers, but you can look for science fiction as a genre. I define it as fiction that explores questions raised by developments in science and technology. "Do Androids..." was clearly sci-fi, dealing with questions about what it is to be human, but also about if we could create souls, etc. (As an aside, it's a direction of thought I really wish the new BSG would've focused more on, as opposed to mythology/political thriller) William Gibson has been consistently good with writing what I describe as science fiction. So was Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon, Diamond Age, even the System of the World trilogy). Conversely, Star Wars would not be considered science fiction, just fantasy with spaceships.

MikeCapone 16y ago

I'd definitely be running this if I wasn't turning my screen off when I'm not using the computer, and if I didn't rather spend my CPU cycle on scientific/medical distributed computing projects (BOINC Rosetta@home, primarily).

pak 16y ago

In case you are thinking of running this, it is fantastically memory/disk space expensive. The fractals are rendered as movies and saved to your disk.

spot 16y ago

Thanks, glad you all like it. This open source network is the popular side of my art. For a peek at the good stuff, see http://picasaweb.google.com/scottdraves/Presskit02# http://picasaweb.google.com/scottdraves/Presskit02# including the recent projections at MoMA. You can download a sample at 1080p: http://www.archive.org/details/HighFidelityDemo http://www.archive.org/details/HighFidelityDemo (control-click the quicktime link and save to your desktop, skip the embedded player).