It all started with screensavers, primitive graphics programs to keep changing your monitor display so one fixed image wouldn't "burn" in. Monitors got better (now we don't have to worry about burn-in), and screensavers evolved into all kinds of mini-exhibitions, ranging from whimsy (flying toasters) to mathematical (fractals) to psychedelic.

The fractal people early realized they were doing more than just iterative math. In those days legitimacy still came mainly through the real world, so books appeared and art exhibits opened filled with reproductions of these lovely recursive images.

What was often overlooked was how much was lost in the reproduction process. Take an image like the one above. You put that on paper, even with the best paper and the best printing, and those glowing pixels two feet in front of your eyes lose their glow.

The light you're looking at on the monitor comes from within, from  millions of electrons interacting with exotic radioactive dyes on the inner surface of your screen. Need we point out the slightly unsettling parallel here?

Electrons : inner screen surface = photons : inner retinal surface.

An image on paper, as with all old art, relies on reflected/refracted light, and your experience of it is vastly different, physically different, from experiencing an image on a monitor. It may well be a wonderful experience, but it's not the same. (Of course, we often forget that this is also true for reproductions of old art: A Van Gogh on paper is but the palest hint of a Van Gogh in person.)

What we're talking about here is beauty. A monitor, even a small, cheap monitor, is capable of displaying original graphics of stunning beauty, of a kind and an intensity which can be found in no other medium. The pages of Magellan's Log are littered with such images (see the index for "Art" as well as that for "Images"). Most of those are still pictures, each just one non-moving frame so rich you can look at for, well, quite a while.

Time now to move. Hundreds of programs exist whose sole purpose is to put beautiful moving images on your monitor. They're not selling anything. They don't interact with any of your productivity programs. You run them and they just sit there making beauty on your screen.

Remarkably, in a holdover from the early, more communal days of the Internet, many of these programs are free. You just download and enjoy them.

"Eye candy" is what they've come to be called in the post-screensaver days. You'll even find an eye candy web ring where programmers display their retina-stretching wares.

As with any human activity, the range of quality varies wildly. As long-time followers of the genre, we've culled some of the best eye candy for you.

Alas, because of technical limitations we can't show you moving examples, with the exception of "Monalisaic," which is our own little surprise gift to Magellan's Log readers.

Here are the best of the best, arranged in order of decreasing preference.

Bomb.
Fractint.
Meditation.
Mandala.
Kaleidoscope.
MonaLisaic. (250k)

Maybe your eyes need something different. Here are some Other Programs Worth a Look.

END

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Magellan's Log VII

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