Interactive essay

Satori rendering: green, magenta, and blue flowing fields rendered with visible color dithering — These pictures were made for a big 4:3 CRT. 66 lb · 4:3 glass

Nirvana rendering: layered white, pink, brown, and purple brush-like fields — These pictures were made for a big 4:3 CRT. 66 lb · 4:3 glass

1990 · Satori

Written by Ben Haller · Stick Software

Six formulas and a Caps Lock key.

Six mathematical formulas set knots moving through a shared color field. Caps Lock had one excellent job: throw in a new set of colors.

Tap a year or use ← →. Each historical role below is transcribed from the running module.

Credits & provenance

Satori — Ben Haller, Stick Software. The module also thanks the Horseflies for inspiration.

Nirvana — programming by Andy Karn; ©1994 Berkeley Systems. Separately, Eric Pitcher identifies it as Satori’s successor and a direct influence on Psycho Deli.

Psycho Deli — concept and Windows programming by Ben McCurtain; Mac programming by Eric Pitcher and Jefferson Provost; ©1996 Berkeley Systems.

Psychodeli+ — continues McCurtain’s engine; the current app credits the update to Andy Edmonds and Eric Pitcher.

Historical roles are transcribed from the running modules’ About panels in Afterglow. Present-day credit follows the current Psychodeli+ About text.

Why “screen saver”?

The moving picture had a job.

CRTs made light by firing electron beams at phosphor. Leave the same bright desktop in place for long enough and those phosphors could age unevenly, leaving a permanent ghost. A screen saver blanked the picture or kept it moving so no one shape stayed lit.

OLED brings back a related risk—not the same mechanism. Each pixel makes its own light, and bright static areas can age differently from the rest. Modern OLEDs counter that with pixel shifting, brightness controls, panel maintenance, auto-off—and, yes, screen savers.

Display notes: Microsoft on phosphor burn · Apple on OLED burn-in · Sony on image-retention safeguards