Screensavers and Computer Dreams

There is no evidence that 10 PRINT was designed as a screensaver. No one seems to have made a claim that this program is useful for preventing phosphor burn-in and that it would be worthwhile to type it in and run it before leaving one's computer for a cup of coffee. Still, it is a non-interactive, endlessly looping program that produces a changing and not entirely regular image. If one had to put this program into some familiar pigeonhole, "screensaver," although it might be a somewhat degrading one, would not be too poor of a choice. So, why not consider the program alongside screensavers and their antecedents?

Several sources attribute the first screensaver, at least for personal computers, to John Socha, who also developed the file manager Norton Commander. The December 1983 issue of ''Softalk for the IBM Personal Computer'' presented Socha's program scrnsave, which simply blanked the screen of a PC after three minutes of idleness. The history of the modern screensaver begins with this degenerate case, this simplest possible image. Many waves of looping motion pictures, often generated from code rather than relying on the simple display of images, would follow that first absence of image, through to contemporary computing in our age of phosphor-free flat panel displays.

Some have looked back before the 1980s to find provocative parallels to the screensaver in the history of art. David Reinfurt considers a wide vareity of moving visual and mechanical pieces, including Marcel Duchamp's ''Precision Optics'' projects, Alexander Calder's mobiles, phased oscilloscope displays, Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville's ''Dreammachine'', generated visual and sound art, and Jean Tinguely's ''Homage to New York''. Reinfurt sought to find interesting connections and not to trace a geneology or demonstrate influence, but there appears to be a compelling prewar antecedent of these programs.

Perhaps the most compelling early proto-screensavers are Duchamp's 1933 ''Rotoreliefs.'' This set of six discs, each printed on both sides with offset lithography, allowed the purchaser to do something with a 33rpm turntable when it was not being used for its primary purpose: listening to music. Just as a screensaver pack offered several options to suit the mood of the non-computer-using viewer, there were twelve options for the viewer, the non-listener. One side of the third disc featured "Poisson Japonais" and -- just as the screensaver would later make the monitor into a simulation of a fishtank -- made the turntable into a fishbowl.

This twist on the electronic device (initially the turntable, later the television or computer monitor) calls attention to its nature as a piece of furniture; it also simulates the activity of a living creature using electricity and technology. It shows us our powerful media technologies made mute, circling, and amusingly off-kilter. The relationship to technology that is suggested by the aquarium screensaver (or fish Rotorelief) is one of odd juxtaposition and low-key looping motion, probably not far off from the effect of spinning a bicycle wheel which has been fixed in a stool.

One very emblematic screensaver combines life and technology in an even more curious way. In Berkeley Systems' ''After Dark 2.0'', the "Flying Toasters" screensaver features toasters flitting across the screen using their small (birdlike) wings. The toaster, the single-purpose device used only to cause bread to undergo the Maillard reaction, drifts lazily through space alongside ... pieces of toast. This screensaver suggests that androids ''do'' dream of electric sheep and that computers, when they snooze, have visions of lower forms of technology in flight. The ''After Dark 2.0'' toasters, remarkably, are not pure technological artifacts -- they are cyborg toasters with organic wings. While they scene they take part in is amusing, it also at least risks calling attention to the limitations of the computer, which, despite its general-purpose capabilities, does not help to prepare food, is entirely inorganic, and, of course, does not fly. The computer may be capable of symbolic manipulations and machine dreams, but there are realms into which it cannot go, realms it is left to aspire toward. 

Some screensavers create very abstract patterns that have no simple interpretation, even as something like an abstract maze. Others, like the early Windows "Starfield" and the Windows 95 "Maze" (which shows movement through a 3D, RPG-like maze) suggest that the computer is a vehicle for exploration. These screensavers live alongside those that play with our perceptions of life, inviting us to think about how technologies relate to creatures like fish and birds. But in addition to all of these, there are screensavers that accumulate structures in a way that suggests industrious, technical production. The Windows 95 "Pipes" screensaver is a fairly famous example. It assembles 3D tangles of multi-colored pipes which become impossibly dense and intricate. This screensaver does more plumbing work in a few minutes than Nintendo's Mario has done in his lifetime. The busy visuals show that the computer is hard at work, even though its user is not interacting with it. While the image is pleasing to look at, it also projects a more serious image than the frivolous flying toaster or simulated fishtank.

While 10 PRINT is extremely abstract, its generation process is more easily interpreted as one of furious construction rather than as, for instance, the amusing simulation of life, or even as something that is completely abstract and disconnected from culture. 10 PRINT suggests that the computer is a maker of structures, is tireless and produces these at a regular rate, and can create patterns that are both pleasing to view and perplexing to walk through. While the Windows 95 "Maze" screensaver provides the viewpoint of Theseus (or perhaps the Minotaur), 10 PRINT shows us the maze as seen by Daedalus: from the mind's eye of the architect, we share the imagination of a structure continually in the process of being built.

== Bibliography ==

Reinfurt, David. "Six Prototypes for a Screensaver: A Retroactive History", in ''Thinking for a Living'' 2, 2009, http://www.thinkingforaliving.org/archives/5465 (part 1) and http://www.thinkingforaliving.org/archives/5466 (part 2).

Socha, John. "ARTICLE NAME?," in ''Softalk for the IBM Personal Computer'' 1:7, December 1983. PAGES?