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Dr. Josef Sprinzak | The Department of Theatre Studies

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Department Secretary: Orlit Keysar

Office hours: Sunday: 11:30-14:30, Monday-Thursday: 10:00-13:00

Room: 4607

Email: orlitk@savion.huji.ac.il

Tel.: 00-972-2-5883936

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Academic Advisor:

Dr. Olga Levitan

Olga.Levitan@mail.huji.ac.il

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Chair of the Department of Theater Studies

Dr. Diego Rotman

diego.rotman@mail.huji.ac.il

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Dr. Josef Sprinzak

JS
Dr.
Josef
Sprinzak
Office hours: Tuesdays, by appointment

My work is a dialogue between my artistic work and my academic research in the field of voice, sound and performance art.

I studied computer science and completed my B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1987, 1990). I then decided to turn to art and studied theater and performance art in the School of Visual Theater in Jerusalem (1993). After completing my theater studies I pursued a career as a vocal performance artist. I create works of Sound Poetry, a medium situated between poetry, music and performance art that investigate the borderline between sound and the spoken word. I perform in various contexts of music, visual art and theater in Israel and abroad, and some of my work has been published on audio CD.

 

Parallel to my artistic work I also started to conduct academic research about the voice as an interdisciplinary medium. At Ben-Gurion University in the Negev, I wrote my PhD thesis entitled “Text-Sound Art: Speech with Source and Temporality Disturbances in Avant-Garde and Intermedial Vocal Art”. It was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Haviva Pedaya (Ben-Gurion University) and Prof. Eitan Steinberg (Haifa University). In my thesis I proposed a model that characterizes the unique poetics of vocal performance art. This type of poetics is based on disruptions of language, the source of the voice and its temporality, and represents an attitude that distinguishes vocal performance art from other mediums that use voice such as music or theater.

 

In my post-doc in “Daat Hamakom” for the study of Modern Jewish Culture, I am part of a research group headed by Prof. Edwin Seroussi that deals with interfaces between art, science, media and technology. I am trying to develop new tools and methods to investigate spatial narratives related to places and spaces. These tools include soundscape research of places and cultures, interfaces between sound and cartography using digital mapping technologies, and investigating place through performance by the use of spatial movement in rituals in works of sound and performance art.