psworld
Description
psworld is work of 'philosoftware'. It began as a modification of the utility, 'ps', found on all UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems.ps is used by people and programs to quickly sort and print a table of processes that are running on a computer. Here are just a few lines from the command 'ps ax', executed on the computer on which I'm writing this text:
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND 3529 ? Ss 0:00 dhclient wlan0 3735 ? S 0:00 tlsmgr -l -t unix -u -c 3877 pts/0 S+ 0:00 mutt 4714 ? Ss 0:00 xterm 4715 pts/1 Ss 0:00 bash 4869 pts/1 S+ 0:00 /bin/sh ./firefox 4872 pts/1 S+ 0:00 /bin/sh ./run-mozilla.sh ./firefox-bin 4876 pts/1 Sl+ 7:51 ./firefox-bin 4928 pts/1 S+ 0:00 /usr/lib/libgconf2-4/gconfd-2 12 8727 ? Ss 0:00 xterm 8728 pts/5 Ss 0:00 bash 8901 pts/5 S+ 0:00 irssi 9730 pts/0 Sl+ 0:00 vim /home/julian/.tmp/mutt-rata-1000-3877-9psworld maps these processes onto visual features in the world, creating a perceptual dependence between a computer and the world around it. As the computer's visible surroundings change, the instability of the operating system increases.
An example: a computer running psworld is in a park watching a bird in a tree. If the process 'Firefox' is attached to the bird's head and the bird suddenly flies away, Firefox will be terminated on the computer. Similarly, a breakfast scene may include many processes attached to various edibles on the table. As breakfast is eaten, dependent processes on the computer will be terminated.
A breakfast is an example of a highly unstable environment whereas a lifeless concrete room, in continuous even light, is not.
Video
A low quality, embedded video that describes the project can be viewed here using Firefox 3.5 (or greater) Google Chrome or the latest version of Safari.An older video showing raw psworld output can be seen here.
Gallery
A small gallery of psworld related images is here.Source Code
The source code for psworld is here (785KB). It was built on both Debian and Ubuntu systems with GCC 4.3.2. psworld was (mostly) written on a train from Delft to Berlin, July 2010.Related Projects
psDoom is a modification of idSoftware's Doom whereby the player terminates processes by shooting monsters in the game.Torrent Raiders is a game by Aaron Meyers whereby the player intercepts actual bittorrent downloads by shooting game entities that represent those processes.