A while back I stumbled across some software called Electric Sheep. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was a video game or what. Appearing to be harmless, I downloaded and installed it. At first, it simply told me to “wait.” OK, I thought. So I came back a while later and it had enabled a screensaver mode and was producing some pretty cool fractal art. At this point I decided to learn more about the software.

Essentially, Electric Sheep is a screensaver program that is supposed to visualize your computer’s dreams (if computers did indeed dream). The application communicates with the ES server and in turn communicates with all of the other computers that are currently ‘dreaming.’ If you like one of the sheep, you can upvote it. If you do not like it, you can delete it from your computer, all with a single keystroke. Included below are some examples of the artwork produced by Electric Sheep.

I have Electric Sheep running on my desktop PC 24/7 and I have to say, the fractal artwork is quite a conversation piece. I find myself sitting here for rather long moments, just starting directly in to the screen. I don’t have any experience myself, but I often feel as though the visualizations are similar to a DMT experience. As you stare into the screen you feel as though you have been transported into some sort of complex parallel universe…