IEEE Spectrum August, 2015 - 40

tHe led cello debuted in February 2014 at the

as tHe concerto oPens, Beiser is seated
center stage, playing an acoustic cello. But
around minute 21, she sets her instrument
aside, slowly climbs a set of stairs to an
elevated platform, and takes up the LED
cello. The first few notes sound hesitant
and experimental.
"I'm just kind of improvising different
sounds," Beiser says. Images flash and
pulse on the cello's face, and as the music
intensifies, so do the visuals, radiating
onto the screen behind. In the piece's final
moments, the LEDs blaze a bright white for
40

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nORTh aMERICan

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a split second and then go dark. "It's very
rock and roll," says Beiser.
This past April, Prestini's company, Via
Records, released the official DVD and CD of
the concerto, along with a companion work
called House of Solitude. Although there are
no firm plans to stage Room No. 35 again,
Prestini doesn't rule it out.
In the meantime, Harrsch is working
with Adriansen on an updated version of
the instrument-call it LED Cello 2.0-that
will incorporate lighter-weight panels with
a denser pixel count and smaller LEDs. The

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

new cello's visuals will be programmed to
respond to the music and the musician's
movements. Harrsch knows it won't be easy.
"Sometimes I wish I could stop the
creative entity that resides inside me,"
she says, laughing. "Because it takes me
wherever my most bizarre dreams are.
And sometimes it takes me to places that
are very difficult to get out of."

WatcH tHe trailer and Post Your comments at
HttP://sPectrum.ieee.org/ledcello-0815

Gutter credit Goes here

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, in
Urbana, Ill., in a concerto called Room No. 35,
written by Prestini. The work is based on a
novella by Anaïs Nin that traces a woman's path
of self-discovery. Room 35, Prestini explains,
"is one of the rooms that one of her selves goes
in, to discover a deeper world within her."
In the months leading up to the performance,
Beiser, Harrsch, and Prestini [right] worked
closely with members of the eDream Institute,
a research and education center at the University
of Illinois that's devoted to the digital arts and
technology. Shown above with Harrsch are,
from left, graduate students Kyungho Lee and
Michael Junokas and Guy Garnett, the institute's
associate director.



HttP://sPectrum.ieee.org/ledcello-0815 http://SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

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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