Don’t touch that dial… these weird 70s bathroom music machines combined the utility of a toilet paper roll holder with the sweet sound of an AM radio.

Audio Waste Land

A visit to one’s parents or grandparents wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the “facilities”, where you stood (or sat, as the case may be) a fairly decent chance of finding a restroom radio. Encased in plastic dyed in unnatural hues apparently lifted from a 1958 DeSoto brochure, these incongruous yet ingenious multifunctional devices emerged at the end of a decade that witnessed one of mankind’s most historic accomplishments: landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

American Ingenuity

A mere 16 days after Armstrong and Aldrin left the first human footprints on another heavenly body, the United States Patent Office formally granted patent #214,839 to John F. Lewis of Hawthorne, CA for his “Combined Radio Cabinet And Toilet Paper Holder”. No doubt Lewis was greatly relieved, having applied for the patent almost ten months previously. As for Armstrong and Aldrin, presumably they were relieved as well once they could relieve themselves in Earth gravity again.

The Rolling Tones

It wasn’t long before a number of manufacturers (including “Stewart“, above) began pumping out restroom radios that generally hewed quite closely to Lewis’ patented design. Among the differences – some might say improvements – were same-sized Volume and Tuning dials and the relocation of the battery compartment to the top of the unit, protected by a snap-on cover. On the downside, the dials’ milled edges were tough to clean… yuck.

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Rockn Rolls Retro Toilet Paper Roll Holder Radios

Resurrecting the signature writing styles of famous musicians and songwriters, this series of downloadable typefaces puts the unique scrawls of performers passed in the palm of your hand(-held device).

Designers Nicolas Damiens and Julien Sens drew from handwritten notes by David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Leonard Cohen and Serge Gainsbourg to create these free fonts. Some came from song-related writings — Cobain’s, though (morbidly enough) was crafted in part from his suicide note.

Each one reflects elements of the source artist. Cohen’s stylized letters, Lennon’s well-ordered words, and Cobain’s erratic characters all say something about the person who created them.

Accompanying images of each artist and the letters, notes and notebooks they scratched away in also provide some context for each creative, illustrating how they worked in a time before computers and typing more fully took over the world.

We tend to experience buildings as static or slow-moving objects relative to our own points of view, but this simple work of creative adaptation turns an ordinary perspective into a dynamic animation.

The facade of the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway is wonderfully ornate, rich in architectural details with rows of hand-carved sculptures, all of which whizzes by in this fast-paced and selectively choreographed mini-film.

Spanish animator Ismael Sanz-Pena composed the piece from a single still image. But, per Colossal, the background recording of chants, cheers and drums “adds an extra element of vitality” through this “unique continuous motion animation.”

“The idea behind the film was to find the innate movement inherit in still forms,” says the animator, who also works on more conventional drawn animations. “Every sculpture has movement in it, and it is the task of the animator to discover it. It was through the process of editing my imagery that I discovered that a single image would suffice to create the animation. The film was made by zooming into the image and panning row by row while making sure that different architectural motives aligned in every increment. This also gave a structure to the film.”

Is this the most terrifying musical instrument ever made? If you just take a quick glance at it, you’ll likely say no – it’s an unassuming (albeit rather strange) jumble of strings, rods, reverbs and metal rulers attached to a boxy wooden base. But just you wait until composer Mark Coven, whose work includes the stunning score for the 2016 horror film The Witch, sits down at it and starts to play. The sounds that emerge from the ‘Apprehension Engine’ are designed to give you the creeps, and they’re quite effective.

Korven, who has scored a number of feature films over the years, was sick of using the same old digital samples to get the signature scraping, creaking, squealing and rumbling sounds that help provide a hair-raising atmosphere. The world of creating analog sound effects in audio post-production is pretty fascinating, and foley artists use all sorts of weird objects to create many of the sounds you hear in an average movie or TV show.

But Korven wanted something very specific, all together in a single instrument, so he turned to his friend Tony Duggan-Smith, a guitar maker, to help him craft it. In this video, Korven demonstrates to Great Big Story how the Apprehension Engine works as he plucks, wiggles, flicks, thumps and runs a bow across the various objects connected to the instrument.

What if you were to eliminate the unwieldy parts of a guitar but maintain its resonant sound and the same exact way of playing, in order to make the instrument are more convenient traveling companion? It might sound ridiculous or downright impossible, but that’s exactly what designer Orit Dolev has done with NOMAD, a compact digital instrument with pressure-sensitive frets and flexible rubber strings to replicate the traditional guitar playing experience.

Dolev came up with the idea for NOMAD after taking a long journey through Asia and South America, where she imagined her guitar would offer a handy and powerful way to make new connections across language barriers. She quickly learned that getting around would be frustrating, noting that she couldn’t just shove it into her backpack, and the strings were constantly breaking and getting out of tune.

Designed to encourage mobility, the NOMAD features a wooden neck for a familiar feel in your hands. It pairs up with an app to play a wide variety of sounds, and you can turn the frets on and off to switch between acoustic and electric guitar modes or even to entirely different string instruments, like sitars. Hook it up to headphones so you can play on train rides or in hotels without disturbing anyone, or play through the accompanying portable amp, which doubles as a case cover.

“Technology is constantly changing the way we are living,” says Dolev. “Powerful mobile devices and widespread connectivity are serving as fertile ground for a new generation of nomads. From urban work-from-anywhere lifestyle to digital nomads roaming the globe freely, new cultural movements are rising. We are more mindful of the objects we surround ourselves with, striving to travel light and collect experiences more than things. Own less, explore more.”