
Electric sheep - shrikant
http://electricsheep.org/
======
srean
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/>.

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-...](http://math.andrej.com/2010/08/17/random-art-and-the-law-of-rotten-
software/#more-541)

~~~
joshu
Both grad students at cmu SCS at the same time, too

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algorias
For those interested in creating their own fractals, I've written a GUI editor
in python for doing just that:

<https://launchpad.net/fr0st>

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pak
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.

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kayoone
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>

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.

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spot
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#> including the
recent projections at MoMA.

You can download a sample at 1080p:
<http://www.archive.org/details/HighFidelityDemo> (control-click the quicktime
link and save to your desktop, skip the embedded player).

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Fargren
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
Have never been more touched by any other science fiction movie. It lingered
within my mind for days.

~~~
Fargren
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.

~~~
patrickyeon
> 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.

~~~
Fargren
So you would say "The Caves of Steel", "The men in the high Castle", "Flowers
For Algernon", "The Right Hand of Darkness" and "Star Trek" are part of the
same genre? I can't really agree with that, I can't not call any of those
Science Fiction.

~~~
brudgers
Well the Star Trek franchise had an episode touching on the ideas of the rest
of them...Data playing Sherlock Holmes, a planet run by Nazis, temporary
acquisition of special abilities and The United Federation of Planets. [Star
Trek is the Kevin Bacon of SciFi]

~~~
Fargren
You missed "The Right Hand of Darkness". And I admit I haven't watched too
much Star Trek. But I think the point still stands that this works are clearly
of different genres, and still it would seem wrong to say any of them isn't
science fiction.

~~~
Archaeum
If you're referring to Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness," I would propose
that the Hainish universe's Ekumen and Star Trek's Federation share a similar
flavor. Moreover, both bodies of work engage in speculative anthropology,
although Le Guin's treatment has, in my opinion, considerably greater
philosophical depth. This is not necessarily to dispute your contention, but
just to point out that they share thematic elements beyond just the science
fiction umbrella.

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MikeCapone
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).

