Eighty-two feet under the surface of the earth, hidden within the cellars of the Maison Ackerman winery in Saumur, France, an eerie blue-violet wonderland blooms in carefully constructed arrangements of UV-coated string. Artist Julien Salaud wound 28 miles of cotton thread around 65,000 nails for his installation Fleuve Céleste, which explores themes of nature, mysticism and shamanism against the natural rock walls of the space.

At first glance, the images seem as if they were created on a computer. But anyone who takes a tour of the winery can walk within tunnels of the glowing string, illuminated by a projected ultraviolet light.

According to Salaud, the work offers “a different viewpoint of what an animal can be: that of the Cartesian or the geneticist, of the predator or the prey, of the sorcerer or the mystic.” Conceived specifically for this unusual space, the work will be on display for three years and is the first exhibition originating from the Ackerman + Fontrevaud La Scéne residency.

Opening last night in Nuenen, Holland, this illuminated cycling surface is free to the public, storing sunlight during the day to create stellar patterns to guide riders after dark. First of its kind on the planet, the swirling shapes of this path are recognizably inspired by one of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous paintings.

Developed by Dutch artist and innovator Daan Roosegaarde in conjunction with infrastructure specialists from Heijmans, this pathway is a potential prototype for future cycling paths using smart paint technologies as well as an extension of an ongoing series of glow-in-the-dark highway projects and other urban improvement proposals in the works around the world.

Part practical lighting scheme and part installation art project, the path is located along a stretch of a bicycling route passing through Noord Brabant, the region from which van Gogh originated, which in turn connects various notable sites from his personal life and work. Its creator explains: “I wanted to create a place that people will experience in a special way, the technical combined with experience – that’s what techno-poetry means to me.”

The semi-abstract pixelated swirls are a high-tech reference to Starry Night, painted in 1889 and depicting an idealized view from the east-facing window of the painter’s asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (now part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City).

Studio Roosegaarde is known for “tactile high-tech environments in which viewer and space become one. This connection, established between ideology and technology, results in what Roosegaarde calls ‘techno-poetry’. His often interactive work connects people with art and people with people.”

A series of dynamic light art installations have begun to take over the largest city in Australia, turning tunnels into painted bouquets and the converting the sails iconic Sydney Opera House sails into a colorful storytelling canvass.

Part of this VividSydney event (running through June 9th), the MLC building begins its animated tale as a small stand of trees that entangle and intertwine to become a single huge trunk.  As the visual story unfolds, “leaves flutter in a virtual breeze. Before your very eyes, a colossal tree seeds, sprouts, and rapidly spreads.”

The process is full of small and sudden surprises as well as slow-building suspense.“Like the dwellers and vehicles that bring energy and movement to a large city, beetles, bugs, centipedes and birds emerge out of the tree, scurry about their business, and then vanish again into the canopy. A symbiotic ecosystem is created [from] previously lifeless concrete and glass.”

Meanwhile, along the waterfront, this year’s ambitious all-new light art production for the opera house will “take the iconic building on a dramatic journey through time – from the birth of architecture and civilization through to the pinnacle of human and technological achievement.”

Other illuminated installations can be found all around the city, lighting up everything from buildings and bridges to ferries and fountains. And light art is only one of its three dimensions. VividSydney “is a unique annual event of light, music and ideas, featuring many of the world’s most important creative industry forums, a mesmerising free public exhibition of outdoor lighting sculptures and installations, a cutting-edge contemporary music program and the spectacular illumination of Sydney’s iconic architecture.”

Traditional timepiece meets inventive illumination in this human-powered hourglass lamp that draws its energy elegantly from grains of falling sand.

Designed by Danielle Trofe, each fixture pivots around a central point so users can easily rotate the wood-and-glass core, thus refreshing the timer and turning the light back on each time it runs out.

Both conceptual renderings and the actual prototype are shown above – according to their creator, relatively little efforts is required to turn the device and brighten a room.

A larger and longer-lit variant comes in the form of a table, essentially an extension of the same design but in a multi-functional format that is potentially more stable and robust.

Other works by Trofe include the above mushroom-shaped lamps (Mush-Lume), which is built from agricultural byproducts (including mushrooms) and seems to balance precariously on its base.

The nature of graffiti tends to result in nocturnal excursions, but painting completely in the dark can be a be problem and sometimes you just need a little bit of light.

LASH is a light attachment for spray cans designed by Subinay Malhotra of New Delhi, India to provide low-level illumination on demand to artists on the street.

The device slots onto the can and charges via a motion familiar to anyone who has sprayed paint, illicitly or otherwise: the shaking action one has to repeat to keep on painting.

The LEDs are intentionally dim and easy to turn both on and off at the push of a button, all so artists can see what they are doing on an as-needed basis but blend back into the shadows with a simple click.