How to set desktop wallpaper and screen-saver from cocoa app?
If you're on Mac OS X 10.6, NSWorkspace has some new methods for setting the desktop picture. The one you want is setDesktopImageURL:forScreen:options:error:.
As for screen saver, there's no supported way to do this programatically. You could modify the com.apple.screensaver plist file and set the following keys:
However, this could break at any time so I would not rely on it.