Steven Kemper
- Associate Professor of Technology in Music and Related Arts
Areas of Study
Education
- PhD in composition and computer technologies, University of Virginia
- MM in music composition, Bowling Green State University
- BA in music, Bowdoin College
Biography
Steven Kemper is a creative music technologist, instrument designer, and composer. As a creative music technologist Steven’s scholarship blends technical development, creative output, and humanistic inquiry. His approach focuses on developing technologies that enhance the connectivity between computer-based music and the physical world, and how we can view both cutting-edge and historical musical technologies through the lenses of anthropomorphism, embodiment, and the cyborg.
Research areas include musical robotics, instrument design, human-computer interaction, gesture, and musical expression. Steven’s most recent work consists of a series of vibration-motor actuated performance systems: the Tremolo-Harp, Lux Tremens, Manus Tremens, and Tremolo-Chimes. He is a co-founder of Expressive Machines Musical Instruments, a collective dedicated to creating and composing music for robotic instruments. He also co-developed the RAKS (Remote electroAcoustic Kinesthetic Sensing) System, a wireless sensor interface designed specifically for belly dancers with composer and dancer Aurie Hsu. Steven’s research has been presented at NIME, ICMC, and MOCO, and published in Leonardo, Leonardo Music Journal, Organised Sound, and Frontiers in Robotics and AI.
As a composer, Steven creates music for acoustic instruments, instruments and computers, musical robots, dance, and video. His compositions have been performed by the American Modern Ensemble, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, NOW ensemble, and the Grupo Sax-Ensemble. They have also been presented at numerous festivals worldwide, including ICMC, NIME, SEAMUS, SIGCHI, SMC, 12 Nights, Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, Third Practice Festival, Pixilerations, American Composers Alliance Festival of American Music, and the Seoul International Computer Music Festival. Steven has received awards for his music from the Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology, Meet the Composer, the Danish Arts Council, and the International Computer Music Association. His first solo album of electroacoustic music, Mythical Spaces, was released by Ravello Records in 2018. In 2021 Steven was invited to compose the music for an interactive virtual COVID memorial created by NJ.com that was released in 2022.
Kemper earned a B.A. in music at Bowdoin College, M.M. in music composition at Bowling Green State University, and a Ph.D. in composition and computer technologies at the University of Virginia. From 2013-2023 he was Assistant/Associate Professor of Music Technology and Composition at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Jersey and served as Director of the Music Department from 2021-2023.
- Mythical Spaces, Ravello Records RR7980, CD (2018).
- Auksalak (NOMADS and Telematic Production). DVD. EcoSono (2013)
- “Drum Circle.” Agents Against Agency. DVD. EcoSono (2011)
- Steven Kemper, “Locating Creativity in Differing Approaches to Musical Robotics,” Frontiers in Robotics and AI 8: 647028 (March 2021), doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2021.647028.
- Alexandra Bonnici, Roger B. Dannenberg, Steven Kemper and Kenneth P. Camilleri, eds., Music and AI (Lausanne: Frontiers Media SA., 2021), doi: 10.3389/978-2-88966-602-7
- Vilelmini Kalampratsidou, Steven Kemper, and Elizabeth B. Torres, “Real-time proxy-control of re-parameterized peripheral signals using close-loop interface,” Journal of Visualized Experiments 171, e61943, (2021), doi:10.3791/61943
- Aurie Hsu and Steven Kemper, “Enacting Sonic-Cyborg Performance through the Hybrid Body in Teka-Mori and Why Should Our Bodies End at the Skin?” Leonardo Music Journal 29 (December 2019): 83-87.
- Steven Kemper and Rebecca Cypess, “Can Musical Machines Be Expressive? Views from the Enlightenment and Today,” Leonardo 52, no.5 (October 2019): 448-454. https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_01477.
- Rebecca Cypess and Steven Kemper, “The Anthropomorphic Analogy: Humanising musical machines in the early modern and contemporary eras,” Organised Sound 23, no. 2 (2018): 167-180.
- Wendy Hsu and Steven Kemper, “How We Re-Listen to a Changing City: Engaging the Senses, Community, and Data through LA Listens ,” Noise & Silence v.2 (2016).
- Steven Kemper, “Electroacoustic Techniques in Electromechanical Music: Musical Robots as ‘Real’ Virtual Instruments,” Journal SEAMUS: The Journal of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States 26, 1-2 (2015): 16-21.
- Steven Kemper, “Composing for Musical Robots: Aesthetics of electromechanical music,” Emille: The Journal of the Korean Electro-Acoustic Music Society 12 (2014): 25-31.
- Matthew Burtner, Steven Kemper, and David Topper, “Network Socio-Synthesis and Emergence in NOMADS,” Organized Sound 17, no. 1 (2012): 45-55
- Steven Kemper, “Manus Tremens: A structured improvisation for accelerometer-controlled vibration motors, amplified toy harp, and live sound processing” in Proceedings of the 2022 International Workshop on Movement and Computing (Chicago, IL, 2022). https://doi.org/10.1145/3537972.3538017
- Steven Kemper, “Tremolo-Chimes: Vibration-Motor Actuated Robotic ‘Wind’ Chimes” in International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression(NIME) (Online/NYU Shanghai, 2021). https://nime.pubpub.org/pub/qx2wiy2p
- Steven Kemper, “Tremolo-Harp: A Vibration-Motor Actuated Robotic String Instrument” in Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK, 2020): 301-304.
- Aurie Hsu and Steven Kemper, “The Hybrid Body and Sonic-Cyborg Performance in Why Should Our Bodies End at the Skin?” in TEI ’19 Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (Arizona State University, Tempe Arizona, 2019): 547-551.
- Steven Kemper and Scott Barton, “Mechatronic Expression: Reconsidering Expressivity in Music for Robotic Instruments” in Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) (Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, VA, 2018): 84-87.
- Steven Kemper, “MYTHICAL SPACES: An Album of Electroacoustic Music Exploring Mythical Time and Space,” Sonograma Magazine, April (2018).
- Aurie Hsu and Steven Kemper, “Why Should Our Bodies End at the Skin? Enacting Cyborg Performance” in Proceedings of the 16th Biennial Symposium on Arts & Technology (Connecticut College, New London, CT, 2018): 34-36.
- Aurie Hsu and Steven Kemper, “Kinesonic Composition as Choreographed Sound: Composing Gesture in Sensor-Based Music” in Proceedings of the 2015 International Computer Music Conference (University of North Texas, Denton, TX, 2015): 412-415.
- Aurie Hsu and Steven Kemper. “Kinesonic Approaches to Mapping Movement and Music with the Remote electroAcoustic Kinesthetic Sensing (RAKS) System.” In Proceedings of the 2015 International Workshop on Movement and Computing (Vancouver, BC, 2015): 45-47. doi: 10.1145/2790994.2791020.
- Troy Rogers, Steven Kemper, and Scott Barton, “MARIE: Monochord-Aerophone Robotic Instrument Ensemble” in Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) (Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 2015): 408-411. http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2015/nime2015_141.pdf
- Steven Kemper, “Listening to the Streets: What sounds do vehicular traffic mask?” MIT CoLab Radio, (April 2015).
- Wendy Hsu, Steven Kemper Jessica Blickley, “Investigating Vibrancy through Listening to Urban Sounds,” MIT CoLab Radio, (April 2015).
- Scott Barton and Steven Kemper, “Drum Circle” in Workshops in International Conference on Social Robotics ISCR (UTS ePress, 2014).
- Steven Kemper, Wendy Hsu, Carey Sargent, Josef Taylor, Linda Wei, “Movable Party: a bicycle-powered system for interactive musical performance” in Proceedings of the 2014 International Computer Music Conference and Sound and Music Computing Conference (Athens, Greece: ICMC/SMC, 2014) 527-531.
- Aurie Hsu and Steven Kemper, “shadows No. 4: Belly Dance and Interactive Electroacoustic Musical Performance.” in Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 2010)
- “Review of the Threshold festival.” in Journal SEAMUS 18, no. 2 (2005): 45-46
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