Sure, Tom Hanks's iconic FAO Schwartz piano scene in Big was pretty awesome. But two decades later Scottish electropopper Calvin Harris has one-upped Big with an even bigger project: the world's first-ever "Humanthesizer," aka human synthesizer.
While Calvin's sonic experiment may seem like a sly excuse to hang out with 15 swimsuit models (rather than the lab-coated "boffins" who originally came to him with the idea), the Humanthesizer stunt does have a legitimate, scientific purpose of sorts. This is how it works:
A special electric body ink, developed by students at the Royal College Of Art in London, allows a current to be passed through the body without causing the usual painful electric shock; then, when the bodypainted participants position themselves on a series of customized electronic synthesizer pads on the floor and touch each other's hands and limbs, the currents generate synthetic sounds.
For this sonic experiment, Calvin played the main keyboard line and effects by interacting with a row of eight girls, while the rhythmic parts of the song were played by seven additional girls dancing a specially choreographed routine.
Sure, the girls are wearing bikinis. But they are also playing a unique, Humanthesized version of Calvin's latest dance single, "Ready For The Weekend," and it's groundbreaking stuff.
Watch the world's first-ever Humanthesizer in action here:
And if bikini girls ain't your thing, here's Calvin's original video, featuring mostly girls in one-piece leotards: