Anna Piccoli

Urinal melodies with Guitar Pee

Playing guitar had never been that easy

If you have ever dreamt of playing guitar without using your hands or if your most secret desire is to create melodies with unconventional tools, you can hope your chance will come again: in 2012, indeed, a Brazilian company transformed one urinal in an electric guitar that could be played with natural flow.

Vergroot

Guitar Pee - Billbord Magazine's urinal allows you to play an astonishing pee solo

Let us brag about it: we have a pretty cool installation outside our building – five pee-stations with projected videos and music which offer both relief to the bladder and pleasure to eyes and ears. However, our (waterfree!) urinals still maintain a traditional shape. This was not the case in the Brazilian café Bar Aurora, Sao Paulo, which was the first in 2012 to entertain its guests with Guitar Pee, a urinal turned into a guitar complete with the amplifier. You did not need your hands to play it, it was touch-free: your pee's flow was the key to become the master of solos.

The instrument/toilet, set up by Billboard Magazine and traveling from bar to bar, made use of electronic tabs which emit prerecorded guitar sounds when hit by urine. Apparently, there was even an app streaming the Mpee3 of previous performers. Indeed, after flushing, a number appeared which could be used to retrieve your own performance on a specific website (unfortunately this does not work anymore).

The ultimate goal of this little prop was to facilitate the maintenance of toilets insofar as men would have aimed better, avoiding undesired splashes outside the bowl.
Something similar had been already made in England in 2011: the clients could play a video-game using their pee stream. Their targeting skills were improved and the fun was guaranteed.

The same idea is at the basis of the small bees you can see in the urinals at Schiphol, Amsterdam.
Well, let's hope all the users of our brand-new installation have a good aim and make do with Kamiel Rongen's amazing work!