Soft Machine Clouds
A bright gallery with clouds made of cloth, each filled by a quiet fan and rising and settling on its own slow breath. Press one, and change the airflow.
Slow breathing
The fabric clouds rise and settle slowly, each on its own rhythm, and shift a little as you move. Nothing flashes. Sound plays only if you start with it.
What you can do here
- Watch them breathe
- Each cloud is filled by its own fan. It rises a little and swells as the air goes in, then sinks back as it lets out, a little more slowly. No two keep the same rhythm, so they drift in and out of step.
- Press the cloth
- Tap a cloud and the cloth gives where you touched it, then fills back out without a bounce, with a soft sigh from the valve.
- Change the airflow
- Airflow sets how hard the fans work. Turned down, the clouds barely move and their shadows hold still; turned up, they breathe deeper and quicker.
- Move around them
- Move the pointer from side to side. The nearer clouds shift more than the far ones, so you can feel how deep the room is.
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/soft-machine-clouds/#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 cloud made of cloth stays up
Pieces like these are usually hung from fine wires and kept full by a small, quiet fan, the same idea as an inflatable sculpture. The cloth is thin enough to let some air escape, so the fan never stops, and the shape breathes a little as the air inside finds its balance. The light coming through the cloth is what makes them glow.
About the sounds
Two recordings: the soft rush of air and cloth as the clouds fill, and a single sigh from the valve when you press one. The sigh waits six seconds between plays.
If you’d rather just watch
Picture and sounds generated from our prompts. Motion, controls and mix by WhiteScreen.tv.
