It seems that a Japanese laboratory has constructed a machine that can write text and draw images on the surface of water.


(Photo courtesy of Mitsui Zosen/Akishima Laboratories.)

Taking information culled from here, Pink Tentacles writes: “The device, called AMOEBA (Advanced Multiple Organized Experimental Basin), consists of 50 water wave generators encircling a cylindrical tank 1.6 meters in diameter and 30 cm deep (about the size of a backyard kiddie pool). The wave generators move up and down in controlled motions to simultaneously produce a number of cylindrical waves that act as pixels. The pixels, which measure 10 cm in diameter and 4 cm in height, are combined to form lines and shapes. AMOEBA is capable of spelling out the entire roman alphabet, as well as some simple kanji characters. Each letter or picture remains on the water surface only for a moment, but they can be produced in succession on the surface every 3 seconds.”

Of course, we cannot wait until a larger version of the AMOEBA gets built, something continental or oceanic in scale. And then rather than propagating saccharine heart shapes and smily faces or boring letters and numbers, one could inscribe the Gardens of Versailles in their entirety somewhere in the South Pacific.


(Jean Delagrive, Plan of Versailles, 1746. Source.)

Hydrology coalescing into elaborate parterres, Baroque statues, marvelous topiaries and geometric hedges — all of which doubling as aquariums. A pack of humpback whales, for instance, will be gliding gently alongside as you sail down the main axis, their timeless chanting filling the breezy tropical air. Enter any one of the many bosquets dotting the landscape and you'll be surrounded by a swarm of fish. Enter another one and you'll be privy to the mating rituals of giant jellyfishes, seemingly weightless, ethereal. Watch out for the one with the great white sharks though.

Then at night, you set anchor in the middle of a tapis vert: a simple grass lawn on land, but out in the Pacific, it's a vast cultivated field of bioluminescent dinoflagelletes.

Unfortunately, there is also the possibility of weaponizing AMOEBA waves in the same way one could turn any natural earth systems, e.g. earthquakes, into a national security threat. Because once the device falls into the hands of al-Qaeda, hydro-terrorists can then easily wipe Los Angeles off the map with a tsunami. In the shape of Versailles.


(Image courtesy of USGS. Source.)

It'll be a new kind of maritime warfare. New York comes under attack by an endless barrage of Italianate gardens propagated from Atlantic waters. First the Villa Lante, then the Villa d'Este, next comes the Boboli, and then another one and another. Vaux-le-Vicomte is mathematically translated into a Bessel function and then supersonically launched towards Boston. San Francisco gets torpedoed with dozens of allées. Miami is under siege by zen gardens. No coastal cities would be safe. Unless, of course, you have your own AMOEBA machine, in which case you could simply send your very own waves to cancel out any incoming tsunamis.

Link:
More info (in Japanese) from Akishima Laboratory

(Spotted on Boing Boing.)