Update: After this was posted it got blogged on Creative Applications and I’ve received quite a few responses via Twitter. See the separate post “Screensaver Culture – Twitter responds” for a summary, as well as some further thoughts on the demise of the screensaver.

• Your task is to come up with a concept for a screensaver that is both suitable to the screensaver format and updated to a 2012 understanding of interaction design. We are looking for ideas that go beyond the traditional screensaver format, or which reinvent that format by applying design thinking to a field full of visual cliche.
• Two general directions are suggested (but not required):
  1. Ambient data gadgets – screensavers as data aggregators and visualizers.
  2. Computational graphics – parametric visuals.
• If your idea is too ambitious to realize in a 3-day time frame we want to see convincing screen mockups of how the screensaver would work. But we would rather see a real demo that’s rough around the edges than a slick Photoshop sketch. You must submit at least one Processing sketch illustrating part of your screensaver’s functionality.

• Yuji Adachi: Briblo – Lego style screensaver
• Twistori, visualization of tweets with certain keywords
• Smashing Magazine: Screensavers – Best Of (2007)
• Kuler Screensaver showing latest Adobe Kuler color palettes
• SETI @ Home distributed computing screensaver
• Scott Draves: Electric Sheep, massively distributed fractal image generator
• Twingly, blogosphere visualization
• Terence M. Welsh (Really Slick) – OpenGL 3D screensavers
• Stefan Trifan: Weather, City
• GeocodEarth, Flickr, GeoRSS mashup