intermomentary(6)

📦
version 6.15 · 2 versions
, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, nixpkgs unstable

💅 intermomentary(6) — the XScreenSaver manual, but make it make sense

okay bestie, so this is intermomentary(6), one of the XScreenSaver hacks, and it's genuinely one of the prettiest ones. it's giving art-museum energy because it literally was in a museum. buckle up 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

intermomentary — a whole vibe that visualizes the momentary and the aggregate intersections between slowly moving circles. yes, both. it's a whole thing. 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

intermomentary [--display host:display.screen] [--visual visual]
[--window] [--root] [--window-id number] [--foreground color]
[--background color] [--num-discs disc count] [--draw-delay delayms]
[--max-riders maxr] [--max-radius maxradius] [--fps]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so The Intersection Momentary is this fun visualization that defines the relationships between objects, made with Casey Reas, William Ngan, and Robert Hodgin. and like, not to brag, but it was commissioned for display at the Whitney Museum of American Art. the Whitney!! main character energy fr fr 👑

the whole thing is a surface filled with 100 medium to small sized circles. each circle has a different size and direction, but they all move at the same slow rate. it displays:

  • A. The instantaneous intersections of the circles.
  • B. The aggregate intersections of the circles.

the circles begin with a radius of 1 pixel and slowly increase to some arbitrary size. circles are drawn with small moving points along the perimeter. the intersections are rendered as glowing orbs. ✨ and ngl the glowing orbs are rendered only when a perimeter point moves past the intersection point — that's the whole trick, that's the magic, periodt.

✨ OPTIONS ✨

InterMomentary accepts the following options:

  • --num-discs disc count (Default: 85) — number of slowly moving and growing discs to use. the more discs, the more CPU power. your laptop will simply have to cope 💀
  • --draw-delay delayms (Default: 30000) — delay in ms between drawing cycles. more delay, slower (but smoother and less CPU intensive). art. 🎨 (the manpage literally just says "art." and honestly? respect.)
  • --max-riders maxrider (Default: 40) — maximum number of 'riders', single dots moving around the edge of the discs. they're little guys. they ride. 🏇
  • --max-radius maxradius (Default: 100) — maximum possible radius of a disc.
  • --fps — display the current frame rate and CPU load. nerdy little overlay, love that for us 🌸
  • --visual visual — specify which visual to use. legal values are the name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual.
  • --window — draw on a newly-created window. this is the default. 🫶
  • --root — draw on the root window.
  • --window-id number — draw on the specified window.

💀 BUGS 💀

setting the background to anything besides black confuses the intensity algorithm and will look terrible. that's it. that's the bug. don't do it. leave the background black, bestie, i'm begging 🙈

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

  • DISPLAY — to get the default host and display number.
  • XENVIRONMENT — to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
  • XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW — the window ID to use with --root.

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

X(1), xscreensaver(1)

Copyright © 2003 by J. Tarbell <complex@complexification.net>. XScreenSaver port: Mike Kershaw <dragorn@kismetwireless.net>

⭐ AUTHOR ⭐

J. Tarbell <complex@complexification.net>, Jun 2003. Mike Kershaw <dragorn@kismetwireless.net>, Oct 2004.

okay that's the whole page, no notes, slay 💖 this lil beauty shipped as X Version 11, version 6.15, dated 30-Mar-2026 — so if you're reading this, hi from the future, go stare at some glowing orbs for me 🫶✨

📦 where this page comes from