spencer topel
SELECTED PERFORMANCES AND INSTALLATIONS
COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS
MUSIC FOR ORCHESTRA, LARGE & SMALL ENSEMBLE, AND SOLO INSTRUMENTS
CAPTURING RESONANCE
site-specific interactive sculpture and sound installation, 2012
+ Sculpture: Soo Sunny PARK
+ Sound and Interaction: Spencer Topel
"In Capturing Resonance, Park and Topel have fused visual and sonic elements in a sensorial environment that captures the dynamic interactions between light, sound, and human presence. Transforming an already architecturally in-between space, Park and Topel filter the non-physical conditions of the site – light and movement – through sculptural and aural forms to create a site-specific and responsive architectonic installation that continually shifts and transforms in relation to perspective, time, and presence."
-- PLATFORM 8: DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum
specifications: metal, plexiglass, low-frequency transducers, ultrasonic speakers, sensors, wire, amplifiers, computer, continuous.
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CELL & SANTUARY
site-specific interactive sculpture and sound installation, 2015
+ Sculpture: Soo Sunny PARK
+ Sound and Interaction: Spencer Topel
This work is an environment- responsive sound and sculptural form exploring aspects of confinement: voluntary versus involuntary isolation, and how this binary relates to our own sensory experiences. Specifically, the interpretation of silence and light as positive confinement, and darkness and noise and noise as negative confinement. In the former context the form is visible and produces sound, and in the latter it is quiet and invisible.
This interaction suggests that form, or absence of form, is essential to our interpretation of context. For example, light and sound radiates out of the sculpture. Yet this is contrary to the function of the form to contain. Similarly, the door fixed in an open position is somehow contradictory to the bird-like song emanating from within the bastille: trapped, crystalline, entombed.
specifications: metal, plexiglass, magnetic resonators, magnets, wires, sensors, microcomputer, continuous.
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BORDER LANGUAGES
site-specific video and sound installation, 2015
+ Art Direction: Spencer Topel
+ Cinematography: Shannon Werle
+ Linguistics: David Schonberger
Border Languages is an experimental video installation presenting over 60 homophones between Hebrew and Arabic. Visitors experience a film of two non-actor Jewish and Arab teenagers reciting the text presented on two floating frames suspended from the ceiling. Projections of faintly illuminated text on the walls around the frames provide a sense of focused immersion. The corresponding Hebrew, Arabic, and English* words illuminate as each homophone pair are presented, providing translation and meaning, but also suggest distance, both in terms of cartographic and phonetic distances. In this context, tension between the sound, semantics, and representation of these words is particularly stark, since Hebrew and Arabic share a common ancestral language, and more-so in relief of broader cultural conflicts and differences.
The words were recited by non-actor Jewish and Arab teenagers filmed in Tel Aviv, Israel on July 6th of 2014.
specifications: video projection, sound, acryllic panels, continuous.
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