As the war between digital technology and physical instrumentation wages on, it seems like the only reconciliation (and I'm not talking about the Josefina de Vasconcellos sculpture) is to combine the two. If it wasn't for people like MIT Media Lab Master's student, Amit Zoran, the war would wage on . . . at least until someone else stepped up to the plate.

With Zoran's Chameleon Guitar, however, no further plate-stepping is necessary, which is good news for plates and better news for guitarists waiting around for someone to come up with something new and innovative while they waste time on the internet. This guitar is an electric guitar with a main resonating chamber that features a removable centerpiece, allowing you to change guitar tops and between various boards with different bracing styles and materials that work with pickups which can be manipulated by a computer to virtually alter the size and shape of the resonating chamber.

In essence, the guitar's physical fluidity is achieved by plugging in "acoustic information" rather than digital information. After a proof-of-concept version build under the direction of Media Lab Associate Proffessor Pattie Maes with collaboration from wooden instrument expert Marco Coppiardi, Amit improved the quick-change mechanism, making it possible to switch out the insert boards between songs at a gig very easily, altering tonal characteristics without changing the shape and feel of the instrument to the player.

Five electronic pickups placed in strategic locations on the soundboard capture important tonal information about the acoustic response of whatever insert board is in use. The information than gets transmitted to a computer for processing. Amit Zoran explains:

"The original signal is not synthetic, it's acoustic. Then we can simulate different shapes, or a bigger instrument. We can make a guitar the size of a mountain."

This also allows for some interesting experimentation, especially if you're apt at a little bit of luthiery yourself. For example, Amit plans to experiment around with different materials like a 150 year old piece of spruce from a Vermont bridge. Normally, this piece of wood would be too thin to construct an entire guitar out of it, but an interchangeable soundboard is no problem.

Currently, Zoran plans to continue developing the Chameleon Guitar after he completes it as a thesis project for his master's degree. Next up, he's aiming for a doctorate which he ultimately hopes to follow into a commercially available guitar.