

Brainwave-Controlled Zen Garden - d4vlx
http://makezine.com/video/making-fun-brainwave-controlled-zen-garden/

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ibudiallo
Very creative. I wish i could build things like that. One thing though, I
quieter motor would be less distracting to meditate.

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joshguthrie
Am I the only one who expected to see the "CSS Zen Garden"? :(

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X4
I wish you made something much simpler like this:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4ehaGeo6vs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4ehaGeo6vs)

All that is needed is just a plate of metal with a frame to stop the sand from
spilling over and a sound wave generator that generates sounds based on your
EEG.

The big bonus is that you can HEAR your own brain this way and by adding your
own heartbeat as background music, you will instantly have an much better
feeling and maybe even have an out of body experience. (It's shown in studies
that the own heartbeat can help induce that)

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dnautics
the patterns created by this apparatus are not as dependent on the character
of the wave as the shape of the slab of metal.

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X4
Thank you, I appreciate your feedback. It was an unfinished idea and just a
hint at the potential behind the creator's own idea. I think the problem you
mentioned can be solved by putting the sand into a transparent hood ontop of a
very thin plate made which all is made out of this meta-material:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmEE-2aJkeo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmEE-2aJkeo)

That meta-material allows sound to pass through, which is perfect to reduce a
loss of sensitivity in the visualization. Also you could use something other
than sand, that reacts much more intense to any kind of resonance frequency.
My idea would be to create lots of fullerenes, each containing elements with
different resonance frequencies, mix them up and put them into a closed cage
made out of that meta-material. Should be amazing to watch the material form
shapes out of your brain waves.

(stumbled over this article, while researching for the material
[http://www.technologyreview.com/view/421285/mass-can-be-
crea...](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/421285/mass-can-be-created-
inside-graphene-say-physicists/) maybe of interest)

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dnautics
I think you don't understand the physics of the process in the plate video.
The material is irrelevant. If you're inducing vibrational nodes in an object,
where those nodes occur will are a function of 1) the fundamental frequency of
the pure tone, and 2) the shape of the object. If you supply it with a sound
that is more than one frequency, it is highly unlikely you will see anything,
and even if you do, the overall shape of the pattern has a larger "shape of
the object" character than "shape of the frequency" character.

If the plate is a circle, the vibrational nodes that you will see will 100% be
circular and "totally boring". If, however, the shape is a rounded rectangle,
you might see "something interesting", but that's cheating, because the the
interesting shapes have to do with the fact that your plate is a rounded
rectangle and not to do with the actual components of the sound that you're
putting in.

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X4
Why do you imply that I don't understand it? I've done these experiments
myself as a child and know enough about the resonance frequency and the
physics behind it. I just suggested that my initial idea can be improved and
how, which doesn't use a metal plate, but a sound passing meta-material, which
would result in more ordered shapes being formed, because the fullerenes
include elements with different resonance frequencies and would probably self-
organize into a structure. It would probably be boring, because it would self-
organize like sediments of different density in water.

