Play with us!
May 12, 2008
thisissand.com is a website for play. It changes the pixels on the screen into digital sand that can be used as building material for cosmic landscapes, Clemens-style sand paintings, mandalas and so on.
This is a joint project of the designers Johanna Lundberg and Jenna Sutela with the Flash programmer Timo Koro. We wanted to create a playground of colours and sound for people to play with us in our sandbox – within the computer screen.
The digital sandbox on thisissand.com takes after the physical one. The user is allowed to do what he or she wishes with the elements in the sandbox. Sometimes the resulting pieces are expressive, sometimes they become more abstract. And just as a real world sandbox, the one on thisissand.com can be smoothed out and re-sculpted again time after time.
Just like the actual sand gets its colour from its origins, the sand used on thisissand.com covers the RGB palette natural to digital environments. Also the sounds of the falling sand on thisissand.com resemble a real life phenomenon: singing sand is discovered in about 35 desert locations around the world where the wind triggers a low-pitch sound in the natural sand. Instead of nature’s frequencies the digital sand generates white noise, which is a random signal with a flat power density. It is considered analogous to white light which contains all frequencies – like the RGB sand on thisissand.com.
The specialities of the digital sand lie in the possibility of saving the original pieces of sand art in the gallery or printing them out. thisissand.com can also be used year-round, anywhere and anytime. The sand doesn’t fall or wear out.
We are adopting the Fluxus attitude and experimenting with perceived connections between everyday artefacts, intermediality, art and play. There is no such thing as a linear plot or a particular set of expectations on thisissand.com: it is a place for recreation and fun, and an eternal work in progress.
Contact us at thisissand@gmail.com!
Thisissand 
July 12, 2008 at 11:26 am
I would like to use this screensaver Help w instructions? Thank you!
April 25, 2011 at 9:13 pm
I Agree!
April 18, 2012 at 11:23 pm
umm i actually agree!!
July 13, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Great work, thank you
September 19, 2011 at 9:23 pm
oh ur very welcome
July 14, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Hello! How about a screenshot for now?
July 15, 2008 at 4:07 am
[…] if you’re curious, here’s a little more detail. But I think you should play […]
July 16, 2008 at 1:00 pm
What a great art tool! Is there anyway to make a smaller design area?
October 4, 2008 at 4:59 am
[…] which I had no idea about “I want to punch something in the face” @ ask metafilter Digital Sandbox for leisure and play William Hazlit’s essay, “On the Pleasures of Hating” How to […]
February 1, 2009 at 10:11 pm
This is fun. My grandaughter will enjoy it a lot
June 7, 2009 at 12:58 pm
hi i have to admit this website is good and dont add me on your emails so you can email me i dont want you to!!!!
March 7, 2011 at 8:52 pm
hi do you want to be friends
June 7, 2009 at 12:59 pm
this website is very good for childrean under 10
September 19, 2011 at 9:24 pm
i think not it is for all ages
October 8, 2009 at 3:52 am
this is a fun
November 24, 2009 at 2:21 pm
this website is cool. you can make lots of cool pics. i made 2 so far and i added it to the gallery. pur in search reaper to find them.
January 12, 2010 at 12:33 am
This is sand.com rocks
September 17, 2011 at 1:54 am
how do u get diffrent colors on it all ihave is black and white 😦
October 18, 2011 at 11:32 pm
u hit the “c” button if that doesnt work click the little grey box in the corner, unclick it the hit “c”.
November 18, 2011 at 9:14 pm
you press c
March 31, 2012 at 9:05 pm
Hi Stephhanie.Do you now to get diffrent colors then black and white?If you do not now to get diffrent colors gust hit C ok.Do you live in Rice Lake?I do live in Rice Lake.How old are you?So Bey for now. from:maddison
November 23, 2011 at 3:45 am
you press c
May 6, 2010 at 11:57 pm
Wooow, great idea.
Filled in a lot of time in computer classes.
May 8, 2010 at 1:49 pm
cool i really like this game sooooooooooooo much i made 10 pics alredy
April 29, 2011 at 12:19 am
im gld u lik it ‘k
September 18, 2010 at 2:39 pm
i love making creations on this site when im angry, the sound of the sand falling from the curser is very relaxing!
October 14, 2010 at 2:56 am
I work in an elementary school. My students LOVE this website. However, they have discovered that there are some very sexually explicit sandart creations. I wish an alternate website–thisissand4kids–could be created which wouldn’t allow posting or viewing of a gallery. That way, young kids could still enjoy the process without the potential for viewing inappropriate pictures.
February 20, 2011 at 8:13 pm
Hi…I just submitted a very similar post just now…then went back and saw yours. It’s such a shame as my K-1 graders really LOVE this site. I have received several emails from concerned parents.
February 20, 2011 at 8:14 pm
I have received several emails from concerned parents.
November 24, 2010 at 4:47 pm
eing?? in spanish please!!
December 2, 2010 at 1:57 am
can ya download it for your desk top?
December 7, 2010 at 3:44 pm
I love this website. How did you think it up?!
December 8, 2010 at 11:27 pm
This site is awesome it is so much fun.
December 17, 2010 at 4:05 pm
this is sand is the most awesome website in the world! i love it! i could play on it all day and i could fill up a whole page. my friend showed it to me and i have been going on ever since!
January 25, 2011 at 4:04 pm
Thank you so much. It’s lovely to play with. I’ll be showing this to my students so they can also play when they finish their lesson.
January 31, 2011 at 9:55 pm
Thanks for the nice comments 🙂
February 20, 2011 at 8:10 pm
Hi I am an elementary librarian and my students K-5 really enjoy your website. However, it has come to my attention that some of the titles that people give their artwork are really x-rated. I don’t want to do it but I guess that I’ll have to take thisissand.com off our favorites. Is there a possibility that you could take off the title from works submitted? Thanks!
March 7, 2011 at 8:47 pm
it is the best art website evera
March 19, 2011 at 12:54 pm
hola quiesiera saver comop poner mi divujo aqui
April 7, 2011 at 7:25 pm
“I work in an elementary school. My students LOVE this website. However, they have discovered that there are some very sexually explicit sandart creations. I wish an alternate website–thisissand4kids–could be created which wouldn’t allow posting or viewing of a gallery. That way, young kids could still enjoy the process without the potential for viewing inappropriate pictures.”
I wholeheartedly agree with this. My students want to see the “most popular” ones on here but I cannot show them to them. I have to watch them very closely to make sure they don’t get into the gallery to look at those explicit images. I of course don’t mind supervising them, but I know some of these kids will get on this site at home. It would make me feel better if this was on a kid-friendly site. I second the above suggestion.
Other than that, this is an AWESOME site! It works great on the Smart Board! 🙂
April 25, 2011 at 9:13 pm
ThisIsSand.com Is AMAZING! I love it!
if you wanna be my friend on anything, Find me at Facebook.com~Kerri Godfrey, Facebook.com/ilovegarrow
Or at Tumblr.com~ xhardcorex.tumblr.com <33 whoever created this is AMMMAAAZZZIIINNGGG!!!! <3<3<3333
April 29, 2011 at 12:20 am
ur stu….pid ’cause u reek of despreation.
May 21, 2011 at 5:23 pm
how do u change the colorers on this
June 12, 2011 at 4:54 am
I love this game, but it takes wayyyyy to long to make a picture, is there any way you could make the space smaller, or provide a choice of small or full screen?
also could you add a tool that you could push the sand over with?
i want to be able to use more tehniques in this. 🙂
thanks,
keep it up 🙂
July 10, 2011 at 3:43 am
This website is fun, and creative! You can make so many amazing designs with sand! It’s amazing what sand can do!
September 18, 2011 at 3:18 pm
http://www.thisissand.com/gallery/ is not loading today and i wanted to know whether it was my computer or the site.
February 18, 2012 at 11:35 pm
it’s not loading for me either, 3 months later…
March 31, 2012 at 9:21 pm
Hi Ryan.Did you see my sand picture?But if you did not see my picture gust go to the slide of the pictures and tip maddy to see my pictures I’mon the 4 slide and my pictureis in the4th row and the 7th picture and my pictures name is colorful mastpiece.Do you live in W.I?I do live W.I and how old are you? Gust asking.So bey.from:Maddison
November 15, 2011 at 3:30 pm
fklasd;jgasjdfksjfa;
i am astusished
November 20, 2011 at 4:29 pm
Bad u have to get specific things
November 23, 2011 at 3:46 am
i wish i could make my pixel sand pictures as my computer screen savers its fun and peaceful!!!! 🙂
November 25, 2011 at 7:16 pm
nice way of puttin it
December 1, 2011 at 3:32 pm
hey how do you save on your desktop
December 1, 2011 at 3:34 pm
hey i am candy and how do you save this disghn on your descktop
December 5, 2011 at 6:31 am
I have just disovered this game and love it. I think that there should be an app on iTunes for the game that we could play on an iPhone or iPad. I would be willing to pay about $0.99 cent for a thisissand app. Reply on this comment if you agree!
December 17, 2011 at 2:28 am
how do you print/save your sand creations???????????????????
February 11, 2012 at 7:58 am
Hi, i would like to give you an idea, for your web site “this is sand”,
I think, will be great, if you place on the web site one little point. So when you click on the point, the screen just rotate… (from left to right smthg like that). What you get is to imitate the cool effect of “Falling sand toy” – like this
February 18, 2012 at 11:36 pm
you guys should make a mac app of this so we can use this offline. and maybe an iOS app as well?
March 31, 2012 at 8:53 pm
This fun to do this is sand and I did one to it has many colors but I do not now how to send it to you so send back bey
May 24, 2012 at 7:54 pm
How do I keep the same color??
May 24, 2012 at 9:31 pm
HOW DO YOU MACK SAND HILLS WELL I KNOW HOW BUT I DONT KNOW WERE
July 31, 2012 at 5:36 am
If you click the “sort by view count” option in the gallery, one of the top ones (an anime/manga-style girl together with Japanese text, labeled “moi | moi | 27.02.2009”) was clearly drawn with another method, as there is no sand grain texture in the picture. A slight random sand grain texture is unavoidable unless a person cheats and somehow uploads a picture from off-site. The image doesn’t belong in the gallery next to people’s original sand work.
August 15, 2012 at 11:31 am
Some weird face turned up in my sand :O