Turner wearing Google Glass.

Google is following associate professor of music Cynthia Turner, director of CU Winds, on Twitter. Its staffers want to see the uses she finds for her new $1,500 Google Glass – the wearable computer with head-mounted optical display – in the classroom, at concerts and during rehearsals.

Turner won a contest to be a Google Glass Explorer. “The technology is here. We can either use it well and for good, or completely ignore it. I’m trying for the second one,” writes Turner in a blog post.

She’s conducting her explorations with the help of Tyler Ehrlich '14, music major and “technology addict,” and Barbara Friedman, Cornell Information Technology “staff wizard.”

Turner is pursuing such ideas with the Glass as an app to embed a condensed score, streaming video from the Glass to give a conductor’s- or musician’s-eye view, embedding a metronome and tuner, and measuring student body/eye movement.

“I can’t speak for Bach and Beethoven,” writes Turner, “but I’m almost certain Herr Mozart, had he lived today, would be a rock star and the first in line for new technology. And who knows, perhaps computer-assisted devices would have made Beethoven a happier guy.”

– Linda B. Glaser