Waterhole Blog
drinkable extracts

Screen Saviors?
Seeing Stereo Tank Vision
September 2022

Screensavers – vestiges of bygone display technology – remain metaphorically relevant. Apparently, the acclaimed science fiction writer Robert Heinlein first conceived of a screensaver in the 1960’s describing a “stereovision tank disguised as an aquarium” with swimming fish. While nobody ever mistook a slime green CRT for a fish tank, swimming fish or not, the flying toasters and other digital creatures, once purpose built to save screen pixels, have graced our inactive displays as optional adornment now for decades.

Here, in the Stereo Tank Vision zine, I riff on the words from Heinlein’s quote. I use computer recorded images to build a two-display story. To record the images, a computer script transforms a video feed by pixelation and color swap. I add lines using a Canny edge detector followed by a Floyd-Steinberg dither overlay. To stage each shot, I used a grab bag of props and items. Finally, I arranged the images into a left-to-right side pictorial narrative – each with a different color palette and joined with a single narrative exposition.

On one hand (right), the story reflects on a lifetime working at a computer. On the other hand (left), there is the story of the metaphorical screen saver. The left-handed screensaver story involves a little surreal-ish trip using Jim Woodring’s character Frank. 

Jim Woodring is known for his masterful use of wavy-line shading with a dip pen and cast of characters that travel through mind-bending wordless narratives. Frank has been described as succumbing to temptation thereby subverting expectations by not always triumphing. Time will tell whether Frank leads to a refreshed perspective or temporary fix.

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