Sky Scanner Experience

Wayward Creative developed an immersive, interactive web experience to promote Muse’s album The Wow! Signal, transforming the project’s cryptic scientific and extraterrestrial themes into an exploration of the night sky.

Inspired by the mysterious Wow! signal—a powerful radio signal detected by Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope in 1977—the experience turned each fan’s mobile device into a portal for searching the skies. Using device orientation and motion controls alongside the camera, fans could physically move and look around their environment to explore a virtual field of constellations overlaid onto the real world.

A custom scanning system tracked each user’s position and rotation, providing visual feedback and radar-like audio cues as they moved closer to hidden points of interest. Successfully scanning these objects unlocked easter eggs and bonus content tied to the album, including videos, live performances, and other discoveries.

By combining motion, camera input, spatial interaction, and audiovisual feedback directly in the browser, the experience brought the mystery of The Wow! Signal to life and invited fans to search for signals of their own.