Lets make waves!

Radiator is a great crowd sourced generative design experiment built with Three.js by Berlin based designer Sebastian Ahoi (@sebastianahoi).  The projects aim: to put a digital face on radio waves.

As you might expect, Radiator allows us to create a short visualization based on our perception of what radio waves might look like. Controls are available for just about every variable, ranging from smooth, narrow, quiet and cold to rough, loud and warm. With each attribute updating in real time you might spend a little too much time tweaking them just to see how the wave reacts… I know I did.

But thats not all! The site also allows you to publish up your wave, as well as browse through the gallery, containing a little over 300 different waves!

For the curious, the project also explains why we don’t have a clear cut idea of what real radio waves look like:

Radio waves are between 1 – 10 decimeters long and consist of electro-magnetic fields. They expand in space with speed of light and can’t be seen by the human eye. Due to the very diverse attitude to radiation and technology, it is not that easy to find only one visual representation of radio radiation.

And, for the extra geeky awesome among us, the formula to generate these beautiful waves is appropriately named: The Superformula.

Radiator by Sebastian Ahoi