Conductive paint, ink and thread can be drawn, woven or even tattooed into objects like denim jackets, carpeting and leather iPad cases to make them into electrical circuits, adding a new layer of functionality as well as cool-looking graphic patterns. Draw circuits in any shape, create smart objects that interact with apps, and answer your phone while biking by swiping your finger across your sleeve. These 10 projects – some of which are available commercially – show how far conductive designs have come in less than four years.

Conductive Wallpaper by UM Project

Instead of hiding wiring for lights away within walls, ‘Conduct’ by UM project and wallpaper company Flavor Paper lays it all out as part of the wall’s design using conductive inks to create decorative circuitry. The circuits control a lamp, fan, speaker, light box and hinged mirror, activated them when someone touches the copper dots, using their body to complete the electricity circuit.

Jacquard by Google: Conductive Levi’s Denim Jacket

Jacquard by Google teamed up with Levi’s to create a smart denim jacket made with woven conductive yarn, designed specifically for bike commuters. The aim is to seamlessly integrate technology into textiles, prioritizing the garment over the gadget and making it ultra-wearable. The threads connect to a smart tag on the sleeve that communicates with your mobile device, turning the jacket into a gesture-controlled canvas so you can get directions, adjust the volume on your music or answer a phone call using finger swipes on your sleeve. The Commuter will be available this fall for $350.

Circuit Scribe Conductive Ink Pen

The ’circuit scribe’ ballpoint pen allows you to draw circuits in any shape using a quick-dryings conducting ink, connecting them to a coin battery, paper clip and LED or more complex parts. While similar conductive pens have been offered before, this one differs by producing just the right amount of ink flow to achieve an ideal conductivity of 50-100 milliohms/square/mil. You can buy kits starting at just $10.

‘Electrick’ Conductive Paint Turns Anything Into a Touch Pad

This conductive paint from Future Interfaces Group (a research lab within the Human-Computer Interaction institute at Carnegie Mellon) turns virtually any surface into a touch pad when you add an electric current over the painted conductive surface using a pair of electrodes. When you touch the surface, the current is disrupted, and the ‘Electric’ program detects exactly where the object has been touched, showing it on a screen. The technology could potentially help engineers test prototypes of touch pad gadgets.

Conductive Knot Lamp by Celia Torvisco

Tie the threads dangling from this minimalist lamp together, and you’ll complete the circuit to turn it on. Designer Celia Torvisco, who’s also known for her conductive ceramic radio, envisions the flashlight for use while camping, riding a bike or reading a book.

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Conductive Design 10 Objects Transformed Into Touch Pads Circuits

Things may look dim for these abandoned light bulb factories but hopefully the last worker out the door remembered to flip the switch on their way out.

What’s the deal with the above OSRAM light bulb factory facade in Copenhagen, Denmark? Flickr user Stine Linnemann (stine_maskine) snapped the first photo on August 30th of 2009 while Flickr user maya weeks (mayaweeks) snapped the same – yet magically de-aged – facade almost three years later.

Back In The GDR

Twenty-five years after the Berlin Wall tumbled, grungy relics of the GDR (German Democratic Republic, aka “East Germany”) linger on like a bad case of heartburn after too much currywurst. Take the distinctive building above, centerpiece of the former VEB Kombinat Narva Berliner Glühlampenwerk which was the main manufacturer of incandescent light bulbs in the GDR. Flickr user Mondrian Graf Lüttichau (Mondrian-Berlin) captured the semi-restored and partially re-purposed main building in 2014 and 2015.

Alien: Resurgence

Stay outta there, Ripley!! This unnamed abandoned light bulb factory would make an ideal location shoot for some future Alien movie sequel, would it not? Kudos to Flickr user Andrea Pesce (Opissse) for not disclosing the site’s details – vandals would stomp those scattered light bulbs like so much bubble wrap.

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Silence Of The Lamps 10 Abandoned Light Bulb Factories

A group of Swedish scientists has developed a successful method for integrating conductive wire systems into plants, naturally soaked up from a gel into leaves and stems to create complete circuits in bionic hybrids. The implications, like the currents, run in two directions: power can be harvested from plants, but the plans can also be changed through the application of external energy.

Botanists and mechanical engineers from the Laboratory of Organic Electronics at Linköping University added the gel at the base of test plants, which in turn hardened into flexible wires within the stems and leaves, all without damage to the organic components. They were then able to send electrical impulses through the plants, lightening and darkening flowers and leaves.

“Although many attempts have been made to augment plant function with electroactive materials, [until now] plants’ ‘circuitry’ has never been directly merged with electronics,” write the researchers in their paper Electronic Plants. “With integrated and distributed electronics in plants, one can envisage a range of applications including precision recording and regulation of physiology, energy harvesting from photosynthesis, and alternatives to genetic modification for plant optimization.”

A number of material combinations were tried before the effective solution was discovered. Some hardened and harmed the plants while others proved toxic or provided insufficient connectivity to be effective. The transparent organic polymer they settled on is able to fully wire a living rose, creating a bionic hybrid without compromising its natural functions.

More from the abstract: “The roots, stems, leaves, and vascular circuitry of higher plants are responsible for conveying the chemical signals that regulate growth and functions. From a certain perspective, these features are analogous to the contacts, interconnections, devices, and wires of discrete and integrated electronic circuits. The four key components of a circuit have been achieved using the xylem, leaves, veins, and signals of the plant as the template and integral part of the circuit elements and functions.”

Tiny bolts of lightning are captured on camera as they shoot off an antique electrotherapy medical device, turning the discharge of electricity into a form of art. Germany-based photographer Marc Simon Frei purchased the 1920 violet ray, invented by Nikola Tesla, on eBay and began to experiment with visual effects.

The device is basically a portable tesla coil, an electrical resonant transformer circuit used to produce alternating-current electricity. Frei used various methods to create sparks and caught them at just the right split-second with his Nikon Df, 50mm f/1.8 lens and a macro extension tube.

He has also played around with wiring, and creating miniature storms within tufts of wool stuffing taken from a teddy bear. Frei notes that if you want to try it yourself, you’d better be prepared for possible equipment damage from the high frequency voltage; the LCD screen on his camera flickered whenever it came too close to the coil.

Nikola Tesla would likely be disappointed that his ingenious creations are mostly relegated to exhibits and experiments these days, rather than becoming a viable wide scale source of energy, but it seems likely he’d approve of this project.

Somewhere between city signs and street graffiti lies a surprisingly rich and colorful language of secret messages, all hidden in plain sight on roads and sidewalks. This spray-painted slang we walk over and drive along every day is employed by infrastructure engineers, utility companies and other city workers.

Laurence Cawley of BBC News recently explored this strange world of colorful spray-painted dots, arrows, text and more, all of which denote what lies below the surface of the city.

These markings may seem rushed and crude to the casual observer, but they are essential to the protection of underground power lines, pipes and a maze of other potential subterranean hazards, as well as to the safety of those who work around them. There are no laws governing this mysterious language, simply conventions and colloquial shorthand that have evolved over time. As Cawley aptly summarizes: “Its lexicon is numbers, lines and symbols. Its grammar is most definitely colour.”

Colors are particularly critical – at least in the UK, red means electricity, blue stands for water, yellow is tied to gas, and green is used for cables (CCTV networks, television lines and fiber optics). White, meanwhile, is a kind of all-purpose color for broader communications about road and sidewalk planning. None of these are spelled out in any official manual in the UK – they are a matter of convention, and, sometimes, contention, as not all companies use the same visual dictionary.

In the United States, however, according to Smithsonian: “These ‘safety colors’–expanded to include red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, grey, white, and black– have been formalized by the American Standards Institute (ANSI) as Safety Color Code Z535, which provides Munsell notation and Pantone color-matching information to help ensure consistency across mediums.”

Back in the UK, numbers and arrows take on different meanings depending on color and context. Sometimes they refer to the depth of a water pipe, or the pressure in a gas line. Infinity symbols may mark the end of beginning of a planned street, while zig-zags communicate an intended pedestrian crossing. Many of these are mapped out by third-party contractors whose sole job it is to locate and tag potential hazards below. All are biodegradable and many designed intentionally to fade over time.

If you are looking for more specifics, the BBC article goes into detail about the particular meanings of various individual marks, but keep in mind: many of these may be particular to the United Kingdom, or even just specific towns and streets. There is no Oxford English Dictionary tying them all together … at least not yet. The next time you take a walk, consider taking some notes as well and see if you can decipher the local dialects of this curious language on your own city’s streets.

Recently popularized thanks to TV’s MadMen, hoboglyphs also come to mind – a semi-secret language of unobtrusive markings used by the homeless to note opportunities and hazards in urban environments. And one has to wonder: are there other hidden communications out there used by ancient orders, intelligence agencies or other groups hiding in plain sight? (Images via BBC and Smithsonian)