Electric Sheep is a cyborg mind composed of 30,000 computers and
people mediated by a genetic algorithm.  It's an open-source,
distributed screen-saver that harnesses idle computers into a render
farm with the purpose of animating and evolving artificial life-forms,
each known as a "sheep".

In our universe, evolution is based on survival of the fittest.  In
the sheep's abstract visual universe, fitness is determined by the
audience.  If a user sees a sheep they like, they may press the up
arrow key to vote for it. Sheep that receive more votes live longer
and are more likely to reproduce.

Interested users can download additional software and become sheep
designers. They manually edit genomes and post them to the server
where they join the flock.  Hence the artificial intelligence of the
server's genetic algorithm collaborates and competes with a human
design collective.  All sheep genomes are distributed under a creative
commons license.

The whole-flock database and archives are web-browsable.  For each
sheep it displays the genome, a still frame, credit to the designer
(if any), lines of descent (family trees), numbers of votes, times of
conception, birth, and death, etc.  Designers and sheep are ranked, so
anyone can see where the top sheep come from, how they are made, and
learn from them.

*Dreams in High Fidelity* is a new manifestation of the sheep.
Physically it consists of a small computer driving a large display.
It plays triple-resolution sheep at a more stately motion than the
screen-saver.  This flock was selected, edited, and sequenced by the
artist.  The combination of high quality and refined content is
striking.  This flock is over 50GB of mpeg4 1280x720p content and
would have taken over 100 years to render on a single computer.

I believe the free flow of code is an increasingly important social
and artistic force. The proliferation of powerful computers with
high-bandwidth network connections forms the substrate of an expanding
universe. The electric sheep and we their shepherds are colonizing
this new frontier.  I look forward to many more generations of sheep
at ever higher resolutions, with more expressive genetic codes, in
three dimensions, responding to music, performing feats not yet
imagined.

Software:

- software used: gcc, apache, perl, curl, mpeg2

- software written: 30000 lines of code over 7 years
about half by me and with substantial and essential
contributions by a core team of about six engineers.


general: http://electricsheep.org/tour

technical: http://draves.org/evomusart05

fresh: http://draves.org/npar06

best: http://hifidreams.com