The Chameleon Guitar was created by Amit Zoran as his master thesis project (2008-2009) in the Fluid Interfaces Group, MIT Media Lab, in collaboration with Marco Coppiardi, a violin maker from Boston.
The academic supervisor for this thesis was Prof. Pattie Maes form MIT Media lab; the thesis readers were Prof. Joe Paradiso (MIT Media lab), Dr. V. Michael Bove (MIT Media Lab) and Ken Parker. Special thanks to Prof. William J. Mitchell, Prof. Tod Machover, Shawn Burke, and Prof. Nick Makris for their help and support.
Huge thanks to Tamar Rucham who helped in every aspect of the work: developing and designing the idea; inspiring and supporting; choosing the project’s name and much much more.
The resonator PCB layout was designed by Nan-Wei Gong (MIT Media Lab), who also helped in assembling the PCBs. Sajid Sadi (MIT Media Lab) helped a lot in electronic advice and integration solutions. Peter Schmidt (MIT Media Lab) gave great mechanical ideas.
For the design work, Jasmine Florentine helped in figure and concept drawings; Melodie Kao helped in the resonator’s design and concept development.
We would like to thank Pual Crowley for letting us use his workshop. The resonator’s tray was milled in the CNC machines of Ramco Machine LLC; the carbon fiber structure for the body was made in Clear Carbon and Components, Inc.
Paula Aguilera and Jonathan Williams produced and edited the projects’ videos, and put a lot of time and effort into that. Alexandra Kahn, Ellen Hoffman, Jen Hirsch and David Chandler helped to bring the project to the press; Webb Chappell shot great images; Stacie Slotnick gave helpful english advice.
Personal thanks to MIT students Adam Kumpf, Cati Vaucelle, Jean-Baptiste Labrune, Marcelo Coelho, Hadi Tavakoli Nia, Wook Yeon Hwang and Adam Boulanger for their support and help.
Also, we would like to thank Gibson for their help.
Thanks for Person, Kobayashi, Meir Igor, Shahaf and all Neocraft gang.
Thanks to all the guitar players that helped:
Garrison Fewell, Barry S. Johnston, Seth Hunter, Ariadne Smith, Adam Kumpf, Kristin C. Hall, Nan-Wei Gong, Jean-Baptiste Labrune, David Merrill, Charlie DeTar, Itay Sagie, Kieran Downes, Marcelo Coelho, Rob Morris, Wook Yeon Hwang, Dennis Miaw, Micah Eckhardt
Photo © / Webb Chappell Photography 2009