It is well known that gravitational waves interact in a non-linear way. This makes it difficult to describe them rigorously. The cleanest description is based on a certain conformal invariance of the Einstein equations — a fact which was established by R. Penrose and was used by H. Friedrich to prove several important global results for general relativistic space-times. The so called conformal field equations implement this conformal invariance on the level of partial differential equations. They provide various well-posed initial (boundary) value problems for use in different situations. The talk will give a computational perspective on the non-linear interaction of plane gravitational waves and also present preliminary results of a simulation of the behaviour of an initially spherically symmetric black hole under the impact of a gravitational wave burst.