This electromagnetic spray turns your entire guitar into a touchpad

We've seen touchscreens on guitars before, but this electromagnetic spray promises to transform your entire instrument into one big touch-sensitive device.

In the future, that could mean the death of volume knobs, pickup selector switches and even the whammy bar... but perhaps we're getting ahead of ourselves.

For now, the spray, dubbed Electrick by its creators at the Future Interfaces Group, provides a “versatile sensing technique that enables touch input on a wide variety of objects and surfaces, whether small or large, flat or irregular”.

Essentially, the paint means the entire guitar ends up conducting electricity, not just the internal wiring. Electrodes mounted to the body track the player's fingers and measure the voltage across the sprayed area.

In the video above, you can see how new controls can be added via connection to specialised software running on a laptop - the inventors demonstrate on-the-fly distortion and filter effect tweaks, but the potential is infinite...