Core Team

Polytope is a collaborative initially brought together by Micah Silver (Los Angeles) and Daniel Teige (Basel, Switzerland). Between them they bring creative, conceptual and technical expertise honed in fine art, intersensory design, and in the development of bespoke, large-scale audio visual systems. Our other core members are folks we’ve known and worked with for years and are unicorns in their areas, bringing insights to what we do that we had never encountered before.

Through the collective endeavors they have developed a model for meeting the demands of projects for whom there is no clear agency or (even) single discipline to engage. From technical and creative concept to final execution, Polyope is designed to spark experimentation between all stakeholders, to go beyond the fears that keep projects grounded in how things are normally done.

Our core team works together to ensure all angles are considered and that we can be maximally effective collaborators with other stakeholders (often architects, owners, artists, other design studios, construction).

Micah Silver
Co-Founder

Micah Silver we worked in and been a student of many aspects of audio, sound, music for over twenty years. As an artist and composer, works have been produced internationally in venues such as Mass MoCA, Issue Project Room, Palais de Tokyo, and OK Zentrum, among other. As a writer, his book Figures in Air: Essays Toward a Philosophy of Audio is now in its second printing.

As a curator, producer and creative director he worked with Diapason Gallery for Sound (NYC), was a founding Curator (music) at EMPAC at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and realized projects with DAAD Berlin, Tate Modern, ZKM, and the Goethe Insitute NYC. At EMPAC, he helped to launch the facility from construction and produced nearly 100 complex projects at the intersection of art and immersive technology. He holds degrees from Wesleyan and a Masters from MIT.

His longstanding collaboration with Daniel Teige evolved over many years developing large-scale productions in Europe and in the United States, notably Persepolis LA produced by LA MOCA.

Daniel Teige
Co-Founder

Daniel Teige works as an audio specialist, creative director and project manager and on large-scale audio scenography projects, contemporary music and sound art. Daniel's focus is set on transforming a narrative into sound by designing immersive audio-visual environments. 

As an audio specialist, project manager, and creative director, Daniel has designed innumerable multichannel audio diffusion and interactive systems across Europe, China and the Middle East. As a renowned expert and performer of the electronic music of the composer and architect Iannis Xenakis, Daniel has worked with many contemporary music ensembles and has realized projects for EXPO 2021, Qatar Museums, Dubai Future Foundation, MASS MoCA, and others. In 2012, Daniel co-founded Polytope Agency with longstanding collaborator and friend Micah Silver.

Zackery Belanger
Acoustician

Zackery Belanger is a designer, consultant and researcher whose work is centered on the integration of acoustics into architecture. Zackery holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics, and Master of Science degrees in Physics and Architectural Sciences.

From 2002-2010, Zackery worked with Chicago-based acousticians Kirkegaard Associates to develop acoustic materials and systems for projects large and small. In 2013, as the inaugural Researcher-in-Residence at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Zackery met Micah and began development of a new framework for the design and assessment of acoustic architecture.

Aya Gerpheide
Architectural Designer

Aya is a visual artist, architectural designer for building systems and objects. Her background is a mix of the creative and technical, with degrees in geology alongside art and design.

At Polytope they bridge between the conceptual design of media environments and the creative and technical processes through which the built environment is established. This includes concept renders, design documents, and fluency with Revit, Rhino, and BIM workflows.

Marek Poliks
Interactive Systems

Marek Poliks is an artist and engineer who codes along the human-machine-media interface. Marek received a PhD in Music Composition from Harvard University, during which they developed a fondness for the strange and fussy musicality of embedded systems.

At Polytope they lead complex software projects and develop interactive/generative audio designs. Marek also teaches part-time in the Electronic Production and Design Department at Berklee College of Music and develops AI-driven synthesis techniques with a research cluster in Hong Kong. Marek and Micah lived in the same house for a number of years in Somerville while both were in grad school.

Adam Schoenberg
Composer

Twice named among the Top 10 most performed living classical composers by orchestras in the United States, Adam Schoenberg’s music is “invigorating” (Los Angeles Times), and full of “mystery and sensuality” (The New York Times). A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Adam earned a Masters and Doctor of Musical Arts from The Juilliard School.

An Emmy Award-winner and Grammy Award-nominee, Adam's instrumental works have received performances and premieres at the Library of Congress, Kennedy Center, New York Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and the Hollywood Bowl. Adam is also active scoring for television, film, and media projects, including themes for Nightline (ABC), That Far Corner (KCET) and others. Adam and Micah grew up in the same town in rural Massachusetts (population: 800), and have been friends since before they could speak. Their first collaboration, MUSICX, featured multiple scored elements and sound design by Adam.