Deep Blue Observatory
A quiet room far under the sea, a long curved window, and moon jellyfish drifting past it. Watch them swim, send up bubbles, and dim the lamp.
Slow water
Jellyfish pulse and drift slowly and bubbles rise past the glass. Light through the water wavers a little on the ledge; nothing flashes. Sound plays only if you start with it.
What you can do here
- Watch them swim
- Each jellyfish keeps its own rhythm: a quick squeeze of the bell, then a slow relax. It rides up a little on every stroke while its tentacles trail behind and sway.
- Get close
- Move the pointer near a jellyfish and it turns toward you, slowly, over a few seconds.
- Send up bubbles
- Tap the rocks at the foot of the bubble column, or press Release bubbles, and a plume rises through the water. It waits five seconds before the next one.
- Set the current and the room
- Current quickens the bubbles and the jellyfish a little. Room dims the lamp and the hum of the room, which is the best way to watch the water.
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/deep-blue-observatory/#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.
How a moon jellyfish swims
A jellyfish has no fins. It squeezes its bell to push water out from underneath, and then the bell springs back open on its own while the animal glides. Moon jellyfish do this about once a second when they are swimming hard and more slowly when they drift. Here each one takes two to four seconds, the pace of a jellyfish in no hurry.
Why everything looks blue
Water soaks up red light within the first ten meters or so, then orange and yellow a little deeper, so at the depth of a room like this almost only blue is left. The moon jellyfish are nearly clear, which is why they glow pale blue against the window.
About the sounds
Two recordings and one quiet layer: deep water moving past the glass, a plume of bubbles when you send one up, and the low hum of the room's machinery. Turn Room down and the hum fades while the water stays.
If you’d rather just watch
Picture and sounds generated from our prompts. Motion, controls and mix by WhiteScreen.tv.
