How did you become interested in screensavers?

Rafaël Rozendaal: At art school I discovered the internet, which can be both a medium and a podium. I could do my own thing there, exploring the possibilities of the computer, finding out what you can do with the computer that you cannot do with other media. Technically speaking, you can create generative images, which are programmed to change constantly. You create a moving digital image by compiling a list of instructions that the computer follows. Put very simply: you create a sort of fountain that gushes water all the time, but never repeats itself exactly. The drops of water fall slightly differently every time. That is how I think of generative images, and that is also the link with screensavers.

How did the screensaver come about?

The very first screensaver arose out of a search for a solution to a practical problem. The earliest computers were often left running all night, and the numbers and letters burned into the CRT monitors that were common back then. So a programmer wrote a small programme that made the screen go black if the computer was not used for a few minutes. The programme was dubbed a ‘screensaver’. Programmers later realised that you could do more interesting things than create a black screen. That is when the screensaver changed from a purely functional programme into a space for play.

As an artist, do you sense some kinship with the screensaver creators?

I feel very closely related to them. I came across many screensavers I was not familiar with, and they contained lots of ideas that I have explored in my own work. For instance, in terms of the way you indicate movement. You actually do not require many elements to suggest a lot of movement. A good example is Starfield, the screensaver in which tiny white dots move, making you think you are looking at a starry sky. The effect is created by about a hundred moving pixels, in a grid of half a million pixels. Just these few elements are enough to give the viewer the illusion of movement.

You often start with a grand idea, which you then have to reduce to the essence because so many things turn out to be impossible. That process interests me. Just as with film and photography, where you look at a scene through a lens and make choices about framing and composition. You start out with nothing and use code to construct an image on the computer made up of a limited number of pixels.