Toni Dove Spectropia

"Not only sets a new mark for interactive works, but opens the door to a new form of aesthetic experience…that changes forever our conceptions of narrative and fiction."—ArtByte

Theater fans and those interested in new media technology will be fascinated by Toni Dove’s Spectropia. Stage artists like The Builders Association, Cynthia Hopkins, and Big Art Group have recently shown how imaginatively new media can energize theater. Now interactive digital video innovator Toni Dove adds a new dimensions to the hybridization of media arts and performance.

Some may recall Dove’s Artificial Changelings from the Wexner Center’s groundbreaking exhibition Body Mécanique, which explored the interface of new media and emergent art forms back in 1998. With Spectropia, Dove has created a futuristic video experience whose narrative is shaped by live performers. They trigger its flow and create interactive scenarios involving audience reactions much like how a DJ builds a live mix. Spectropia, Dove’s sci-fi heroine, travels back in time from the dystopian near future to a noirish version of the 1930s, after the stock market crash. The story uses the metaphor of supernatural possession to investigate desire, consumer culture, dislocation, and identity: How do I know who am I? Who is pulling the strings?

Here's a plot summary from the show's program:

Spectropia, a young woman, lives in the salvage district of an urban center of the future, a black market hub of retro object barter. Using a machine of her own invention to search the past for her father (lost in time looking for a vanished family inheritance), Spectropia is accidentally transported to New York City in 1931 when her machine short circuits and she finds herself in the body of another woman, Verna de Mott, an amateur sleuth.

Toni Dove and Pages

While at the Wexner Center, Toni Dove and her team of collaborators offered two workshops for high school students through our Pages program. During these sessions, students viewed excerpts from Spectropia and so were able to see how Dove utilizes interactive digital video technology to create new forms of theater and gallery-based installations. They also experimented with the interactive control devices utilized in its performance and asked questions about the work.

Pages is a program designed to enhance literacy and skills in writing and reading. It offers high school students dynamic and challenging experiences in the arts and provides multiple opportunities for each student to document and respond to those experiences in a variety of writing exercises, from research papers to poetry. In the interdisciplinary learning environment of Pages, students discuss, express, and document their observations, thoughts, and opinions about the diverse contemporary art they encounter at the center.