Zen Sand Tray
A shallow tray of fine sand, a black stone, and a brass funnel pouring a thin stream. Rake it, draw in it, flatten it, and keep what you make.
Slow and quiet
A thin stream of sand falls from the funnel. Nothing else moves until you draw, or until you let the tray rake itself. Sound plays only if you start with it.
What you can do here
- Rake or draw
- Drag across the sand. The rake leaves four even grooves with a ridge between each; the stick draws a single line. The stone stays where it is, so work around it the way you would in a real tray.
- Start over
- Smooth sweeps away what you’ve drawn and leaves the tray as it came. Flat tray goes further and levels the curve that was there to begin with, so you get a clean surface.
- Pour more sand
- Tap the funnel and it runs fuller for a few seconds, building the little heap below it.
- Let it rake itself
- Turn on Rake itself and the tray draws slow patterns on its own: rings around the stone, long waves, then a fresh start. That is the mode to leave running as a screensaver or live wallpaper.
- Keep it
- Save image gives you the tray as you left it, at 2048 × 1152, ready for a desktop.
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/zen-sand-tray/#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.
Patterns to try
Dry gardens in Japan, such as the one at Ryōan-ji in Kyoto, use raked gravel to stand for water. Straight, parallel lines read as still water: drag the rake across the whole tray in one stroke, then lay the next stroke just below the last. Rings read as water meeting a rock: start against the stone and circle outward, keeping the rake level. For waves, go slowly side to side as you travel across.
About the sounds
Two recordings: the thin stream of sand, and a short cascade when you tap the funnel. The soft scrape while you rake isn’t a recording. It’s made in your browser from filtered noise and follows how fast your hand moves, so it stops the moment you do.
If you’d rather just watch
Picture and sounds generated from our prompts. Motion, controls and mix by WhiteScreen.tv.
