Designed by a group of industrial design students from the OPENLIGHT creative lab at Eindhoven’s University of Technology, WAVES is a multimedia art installation that visualises sound waves by responding to audience participation.

Using four Sorama sound cameras - which carry 1024-channel microphone arrays capable of picking up ambient noise in three dimensions - the art project visualises sound as a series of expanding and shrinking circles that appear at visitors’ feet in direct correlation to different frequencies, locations and volumes created by people in the room. Debuted at GLOW 2013 last month, the project aims to draw attention to the notion that although we are continuously surrounded by waves, we never see them, and rarely think about them.

The Sorama technology behind the installation is primarily used in isolating ambient noise to better understand where, how or why a certain product is vibrating or producing sound. This technology is often used as a tool by engineers who are attempting to design quieter products, although the strong visual element to WAVES means that the focus is on experiencing how waves travel through space and bounce off hard surfaces, with beautiful results.