This Radio Is Hard To Tune But Easy To Look At

Radio Active, a project by industrial design student Erez Bar Am, is a wall-mounted analogue radio. That’s all good and well. The frustration begins when you realise you have to rearrange it every time you want to change the station.

Radio Active consists of a main module – the blue one – and several satellite modules, three of which are attached to the central one by string. Those strings are central to the radio’s uniquely annoying conceit: you control the Radio Active’s volume and tuning by pulling those connected pieces to different places on your wall.

Bar Am claims that the design allows the radio to double as decorative art, and I’d agree that having the Radio Active archipelago on your wall is a lot more interesting than sticking up some Salvadore Dali poster. But its important to remember that it’s a radio first and art second, lest you find out your masterpiece arrangement of the modules comes with an accompanying soundtrack of 92.4 WZYX, All Death Metal All The Time at full volume.

You can watch the Radio Active being pulled ever-so-slightly into action in this clip:

It’s good to get people interacting with their gadgets in new ways, but I think I’ll stick to knobs for this one, thanks. [The Design Blog]