Humanity became great for two reasons: our ability to create beauty through art, and our urge to build increasingly huge, terrifying gadgets. It only makes sense that these two impulses would converge in amazing, if largely useless, ways. That's how we wind up with huge and insane musical instruments like ...

6 Uberorgan

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Uberorgan isn't just the Internet username of millions of 15-year-old males -- it's also something much stranger. Imagine a series of gigantic alien bagpipes, mixed with a monstrous player piano, all connected by huge translucent worms that snake throughout the bulk of a 15,000-square-foot gallery. Pictured that yet? Good job! You just dreamed up the huge, terrifying musical instrument known as Uberorgan.

Odd Music

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From the lesser known sequel, Willy Wonka and the Church Organ from Hell.

Uberorgan is a self-playing (and, we're convinced, self-aware) musical machine in which several bus-sized biomorphic balloons are tuned to different octaves so that when pressurized air is blown through a reed, a specific sound is produced. The notes themselves are encoded on a 250-foot-long scroll bearing dots and dashes that translate to "traditional hymns, pop songs and improvisational tunes." The score is deciphered by the organ's "brain," which is essentially a giant, light-sensitive player piano.

But what if you're not too keen on the built-in playlist? Well, due to the light-sensitive nature of the brain, you can always stop the score at a blank space and play the organ like a piano by blocking light from reaching each sensor. That is, until the thing finally decides that it's had enough of being cramped up in a museum and bursts out in a wave of destruction across Los Angeles like some kind of otherworldly jellyfish, puffing Katy Perry tunes the entire way.