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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.

 

  • , Ravello Records RR7980, CD (2018).
  •  (NOMADS and Telematic Production). DVD. EcoSono (2013)
  • “.”&Բ;Agents Against Agency. DVD. EcoSono (2011)

  • Steven Kemper, “,”&Բ;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.,  (Lausanne: Frontiers Media SA., 2021), doi: 10.3389/978-2-88966-602-7
  • Vilelmini Kalampratsidou, Steven Kemper, and Elizabeth B. Torres, “,”&Բ;Journal of Visualized Experiments 171, e61943, (2021), doi:10.3791/61943
  • Aurie Hsu and Steven Kemper, “” Leonardo Music Journal 29 (December 2019): 83-87.
  • Steven Kemper and Rebecca Cypess, “,”&Բ;Leonardo 52, no.5 (October 2019): 448-454. https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_01477.
  • Rebecca Cypess and Steven Kemper, “,”&Բ;Organised Sound 23, no. 2 (2018): 167-180.
  • Wendy Hsu and Steven Kemper, “ ,”&Բ;Noise & Silence v.2 (2016).
  • Steven Kemper, “Electroacoustic Techniques in Electromechanical Music: Musical Robots as ‘Real’ Virtual Instruments,”&Բ;Journal SEAMUS: The Journal of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States 26, 1-2 (2015): 16-21.
  • Steven Kemper, “”&Բ;Emille: The Journal of the Korean Electro-Acoustic Music Society 12 (2014): 25-31.
  • Matthew Burtner, Steven Kemper, and David Topper, “,”&Բ;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). 
  • Steven Kemper, “Tremolo-Chimes: Vibration-Motor Actuated Robotic ‘Wind’ Chimes” in International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression(NIME) (Online/NYU Shanghai, 2021). 
  • Steven Kemper, “” 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, “” 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, “,” Sonograma Magazine, April (2018).
  • Aurie Hsu and Steven Kemper, “Why Should Our Bodies End at the Skin? Enacting Cyborg Performance” in  (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. “” 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, “” MIT CoLab Radio, (April 2015).
  • Wendy Hsu, Steven Kemper Jessica Blickley, “” 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, “” 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, “” 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

News

Expressive Machines

How do we think about musical expression, especially in relation to robots and machines? That’s the question Steven Kemper aims to answer in his research. In the age of artificial intelligence—and the various concerns surrounding it—Kemper’s research proves that robots can, in fact, enhance human creativity.

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