Steve Roden (April 27, 1964 – September 6, 2023) was an American and musician. He worked in the fields of Sound art and visual art, and is credited with pioneering lowercase music, a compositional style where quiet and usually unheard sounds are amplified to create complex and rich . His discography of multiple albums and works of sound art includes Forms of Paper, which was commissioned by the Los Angeles Public Library.
Biography
While he was a student at Beverly Hills High School from 1979 to 1982, Roden started a
punk rock band called the Seditionaries, who performed with bands such as
Circle Jerks, T.S.O.L. and The Damned. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design (now Otis College of Art and Design) in 1986 and a Master of Fine Art from ArtCenter College of Design in 1989.
In 2013 Steve Roden's work was featured in a two-person exhibition with Jenny Perlin at the Cleveland Institute of Art, and in a solo exhibition at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. In 2010, a mid-career survey of Roden's work was presented at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA, curated by Howard Fox. Steve Roden was also a recipient of the 2011 Artist Grant of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and of a California Community Foundation Getty Fellowship Grant. His work has been featured in many exhibitions and museums around the world.
Personal life and death
Roden married Sari Takahashi in 1993; the couple lived in the Park La Brea section of Los Angeles.
Roden was diagnosed with Early-onset Alzheimer's disease in 2017, and died at his home on September 6, 2023, at the age of 59.
Discography
This is an incomplete list.
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The Secret of Happiness (1990)
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So Delicate And Strangely Made (1993)
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Humming Endlessly in the Hush (1995)
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Translations & Articulations (1997)
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Crop Circles (1997)
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The House was Quiet and the World was Calm (1999) (with Brandon LaBelle)
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The Opening of the Field (1999) (with Brandon LaBelle)
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View (1999)
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Four Possible Landscapes (2000)
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Forms of Paper (2001)
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Schindler House (2001)
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Japan (2001) (with Bernhard Günter)
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Winter Couplet (2002)
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Light Forms (2003)
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Speak No More About the Leaves (2003)
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Airforms (2005)
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Stars of Ice (2008)
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Flower & Water (2014)
External links
