Night Ferry
The sheltered side deck of a ferry after dark: a teal rail, a coiled rope, and a city’s lights laid out on the water.
A gentle roll
The water streams past and the whole view rolls very slightly with the boat, never more than about a third of a degree; turn Swell down to steady it. Light glints on the waves, but its overall brightness stays even and nothing flashes. Sound plays only if you start with it.
What you can do here
- Set the pace
- Pace sets how fast the water runs past: quickly by the hull, barely at all far out, as it does from a moving boat. The engine rises with it, and the city stays where it is, the way a far shore does.
- Feel the swell
- Swell sets how big the waves are and how much the deck rolls. Bigger waves break the reflections into more glints and carry them closer to the boat; all the way down, the waves are small and the view is almost perfectly steady.
- Stir the water
- Move across the water and the waves near you grow a little, so the reflections there break into more glints.
- Touch the rope
- Tap the coiled rope on the rail and it shifts against the cleat.
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/night-ferry/#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 lights become long streaks
Still water would show each city light once, as a single point. Moving water is covered in small tilted faces, and every one that happens to angle a light toward you shows a bright spot, all the way from the shore to the boat. Together those spots draw the long streaks, which is why the streaks shimmer in place instead of traveling with the water.
About the sounds
Two recordings and one quiet layer: a ferry underway, with its engine hum and the hull moving through the water; a rope knocking against the cleat when you touch it; and a little night wind.
If you’d rather just watch
Picture and sounds generated from our prompts. Motion, controls and mix by WhiteScreen.tv.
