spencer topel
Video
from Recent Performances | Installations | Film Projects
Spencer Topel | Listening Glass
Listening Glass (2014) is the first installation in a series exploring the relationships between interior spaces and external ones. Visitors experience a continuous live audio stream from Barton Creek Wilderness Park in Austin, Texas transduced over a large atrium window at Wesleyan University . The design allows listeners to experience different aspects of the soundscape using the natural filtering properties of an assortment of twelve surface transducers. This work was sponsored by SEAMUS 2014, at Wesleyan University, and was in collaboration with Joel Goodwin at Live Nature Songs Ltd.
Spencer Topel | Violine
Violine (2010) by composer Spencer Topel Pauline Kim Harris (violin) with the composer (laptop) live at Rockwood Music Hall, June 30th 2013. Score and materials available upon request.
Spencer Topel | Callings
Callings is an intervention/performance filmed on March 16th, 2013 on the Den Røde Plads (Red Square) in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Composer: Spencer Topel
Concept: Spencer Topel and Jesper Egelund
This project was supported by the Danish Arts Council Committee for Performing Arts. For more information, please visit kunst.dk
Spencer Topel | Homophøn
Interactive video and sound installation (2012)
Spencer Topel, sound/concept
Alexander Stockton, cinematography
November 14th - 16th, 2012Hopkins Center, Hanover NH, USA
Homophøn is an interactive installation exploring the interplay between interlingual homophones in French and English and their underlying meaning. While the sounds of the words are the same, the meanings are often very different. Two 50" TV's present video and audio to the viewer. Using a proximity sensor, the viewer can experience only one perspective at a time, and their presence between the two TV's is essential to unscrambling the video and audio. The idea being to roughly mimic the experience of bilingual speakers, who often encounter similar sounding words between both languages, but can only process the meaning in one of those languages.
Soo Sunny Park & Spencer Topel Capturing Resonance
Site-Adaptive Multi-Media Installation(2012)
Soo Sunny Park, Sculpture
Spencer Topel, sound & interaction
July 2010 - July 2011 DeCordova Sculpture Park and Gallery
Excerpt from the Platform 8 Series website at:
...Hanging from the third floor ceiling, Capturing Resonance fills the narrow space. The cascading, interlocking convex and concave Plexi and chain link fence units appear as biomorphic forms, overwhelming the field of vision of each visitor as they enter the gallery. Depending on the time of day, rainbow hued shadows fill the space, shifting from crisp representations of the structure to abstract color washes with the path of the sun. In Capturing Resonance, shifting light becomes a sculptural material and a symbol of transient physical and psychological states.
As visitors proceed through the interstitial – or in-between – space, motion sensors in the installation respond by activating different auditory ‘states’ that vary in both intensity and frequency. Layering an audio dimension onto Capturing Resonance, Topel blends whispering chords, soft tonal washes, and elongated instrumental sounds in a continuous and ever-changing composition that responds to human interaction. Depending on the number of people in the space, the musical states increase or decrease accordingly, and create a site-responsive installation. Hightech Holosonic Audio Spotlight panels and low-frequency bass exciters installed throughout the gallery, work together with the sculptural forms to create an experience of dematerialized or ethereal space.
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.