[ Thanks to tjavailable for this link.
]
“The name ‘Electric Sheep’ is an allusion to the novel ‘Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ by Phillip K. Dicks. The program
renders flame fractals, called sheep, which are uploaded to the
server, where a ‘flock’ of about 100 are stored, combined and
evolve. These are distributed to client machines and displayed as a
screensaver ‘dream’ when the computer sleeps.“According to ‘The Flame Algorithm and its Open Source Culture’
by Scott Draves and Isabel Walcott Draves:“‘The algorithm treats every pixel as a variable in an equation
with thousands of parameters. The parameters specify a collection
of functions from the plane to the plane, and the algorithm
visualizes the interference pattern between them. This is the
origin of the Flame algorithm, a combination of fractals with a
particle system [Draves and Reckase 2003]. The results are
distinctive, recognizable, and extremely diverse.'”