Electric Sheep Screensaver Freeware

This looks cool. That was my first reaction when I saw the generated images at the electricsheep.org website. Electric Sheep is a free screensaver that runs on PCs and MACs and is used by lots of people around the world.

When the screensaver is installed on your system all computers currently displaying the screensaver combine their power to create morphing abstract animations known as "sheep".

Anyone watching one of these computers may vote for their favorite animations using the keyboard. The more popular sheep live longer and reproduce according to a genetic algorithm with mutation and cross-over. Hence the flock evolves to please its global audience.

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".

It is interesting to note that Electric Sheep users can now create their own sheeps, and make them available for everyone else. It is nothing though that can be done in a few minutes in an easy to use interface. A good starting point is the Sheep Design Tips article on Google Code that is revealing information about usual methods, tips and suggestions, as well as workflow information. Programs to create sheeps are available for Windows, Macintosh and Linux computer systems, which means that every user should have access to a program to start creating the screensavers.

Another good starting point for everything Sheep related is the FAQ on Google Code, that is answering common questions. Here you get answers if the screensaver is crashing your PC, or if you are only seeing one or two sheep, and note more.

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