Image source :The Metropolitan museum of art.Nature (13 september 2007)has an intersting article on Science in culture.It mentions the ongoing collaboration between a nanoscientist and tibetian monks to explore Chakrasamvara mandala.The article mentions that these tibetian mandalas are made of colored,tiny loose grains of sand.
The article says
The mandala, called the 'wheel of great bliss', encircles the palatial residence of the deity Heruka Chakrasamvara. It places particular emphasis on the female ideal of wisdom.
Gimzewski has used optical and scanning electron microscopy to delve into progressively smaller features of the sand mandala, right down to the molecular level. Microscopic images across this range were then blended with a sequence of zoomed photographs to produce a continuous visual journey from the whole mandala into ever-finer details of its physical composition. The result is a seamless 15-minute sequence that is projected onto a circular bed of flat, unpatterned sand.(http://nano.arts.ucla.edu/mandala/)
The original sand mandala was two-and-a-half metres in diameter and took four monks working for eight hours a day four weeks to complete in Gimzewski's laboratory. The final computer output comprised 30,000 individual frames containing 900 gigabytes of data. Thirty-six computers were pressed into service to render the images over the course of two days, and nine computers completed the recomposition of the continuous sequence
It is interesting.