Bamboo Courtyard
A small stone courtyard under tall bamboo, a wooden wind chime at the edge of the roof, and leaf shadows on the paving. Raise the breeze, or ring the chime yourself.
A light breeze
The bamboo leans slowly in the wind, the chime swings, and leaf shadows move a little on the stone. Nothing flashes. Sound plays only if you start with it.
What you can do here
- Ring the chime
- Tap the chime or press Ring the chime. The striker swings into a tube, the note sounds as they meet, and the tubes keep swinging for a while after. It won’t ring again for five seconds, so it never turns into a racket.
- Raise the breeze
- Breeze runs from still air to a steady wind. The sail at the bottom catches it first and swings on its long string; turn it up far enough and now and then a gust rings the chime on its own, a minute or so apart.
- Send a gust
- Drag across the courtyard and a gust follows: the bamboo leans further, the chime swings harder, and both settle again over a few seconds.
- Watch the paving
- The leaf shadows on the stone move with the bamboo above them. The stone itself stays still, the way it does in a real courtyard.
Use it as your wallpaper
Press F for fullscreen and M to turn the sound off and on; the volume and your sound choice carry over to every wallpaper. The sound keeps playing if you switch to another tab.
Live link
https://whitescreen.tv/interactive-wallpapers/bamboo-courtyard/#wallpaper- On a computer desktop
- Some wallpaper apps can show a web page behind your desktop icons. Give one the live link above and the scene runs there on its own: no page around it, no ads and no sound.
- On a TV or a spare screen
- Open this page and press F, or use Fullscreen. While it’s in fullscreen we ask the browser to keep the screen from going to sleep.
- On a phone or tablet
- Save image downloads exactly what’s on the screen as a picture. Set it as your wallpaper from your photos; the phone will crop the sides.
A live wallpaper keeps a page running all day. Through the live link the scene draws at most 30 frames a second and stops while the screen is covered, but on a laptop it still costs some battery.
Why the parts swing at different speeds
Every part of a wind chime is a pendulum, and a pendulum’s rhythm depends on its length. The tubes are short, so they swing about once a second; the sail hangs on a long string, so it takes about two. The wind pushes hardest on the sail, because it is broad and flat, and the sail pulls the striker into the tubes. That is why a chime often swings for a while without a sound and then rings once.
About the sounds
Two recordings and one quiet layer: bamboo leaves in the breeze, one wooden chime note, and the open air of the garden. The leaves get louder with the Breeze slider. There is only one note, played when the striker actually meets a tube, so the chime never plays a tune.
If you’d rather just watch
Picture and sounds generated from our prompts. Motion, controls and mix by WhiteScreen.tv.
