IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - 38

i

HarrscH faced a number of cHallenges: The cello had to
be comfortable to play, the visuals had to make sense to the
audience and also blend seamlessly with the music, and of
course, everything had to work technically. To investigate the
cello's ergonomics, Harrsch created a cardboard version of it,
which Beiser experimented with [above] to see if the size and
shape worked. They did.
The cello's "display" consists of eight 32- by 32-pixel LED
panels arranged in a blocky "U" shape on the front of the
instrument. Two panels sit on each side of the cello's bridge,
and the remaining four panels form a square at the bottom.
Worried that the display would look flat and rigid, Harrsch
tilted the bottom panels to give the optical illusion of curvature.
The Yamaha electric cello [opposite page, top left] that
Harrsch used as the base for her instrument is about the
same size as its acoustic counterpart, but instead of having
a resonant sound box, it amplifies the sound electronically.
Would having LEDs so close to the instrument's delicate
electronics create distortion? Harrsch contacted Yamaha
seeking advice.
"They told us it was impossible," she recalls, "that what we
were wanting to do would destroy the sound."
38

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aUG 2015

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nORTh aMERICan

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SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

All Photos: erikA hArrsch

t's a warm summer evening in
New York City, and the visual artist
erika Harrsch is having dinner with
meric adriansen, an engineer and
managing partner of the lighting
design company D3 LeD. adriansen's
company specializes in sophisticated LeD
installations for advertising and public
art. after dinner, the two stroll through
times square, where adriansen points
out a few of his company's immense,
shimmering creations and describes how
the visuals are programmed.
"we should do something together
one day," adriansen tells Harrsch. and
just like that, a collaboration is born.
"For me, it was like an open window of
possibility," Harrsch recalls of that evening
three years ago. she soon knew exactly
what she wanted to do: build a cello
illuminated with light-emitting diodes.
Harrsch had recently begun working
with the avant-garde composer Paola
Prestini and cellist maya Beiser on a
new concerto. until her dinner with
adriansen, Harrsch had been envisioning
video backdrops against which Beiser
would perform; she'd created similar
works for other musical performances.
"this time, I wanted not just videos
as background but as an integral part of
the piece," Harrsch says. "I wanted to
create a living sculpture, of music and
light." and so she did: the LeD cello. n



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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum August, 2015

IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - 1
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IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - Cover4
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