About

Stephanie Cheng Smith is a composer, performer and programmer who creates interactive pieces, installations, improvisations and through-composed works. She often uses electronics, violin and light, and her explorations with motor arrays have been featured in the 2016 issue of Experimental Music Yearbook. Smith’s performances and residencies include Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM, Amsterdam), PACT Zollverein (Essen), liebig12 (Berlin), Re-New Digital Arts Festival (Copenhagen), EcoSono (Caribbean), Centre for the Living Arts (Mobile), Megapolis Arts Festival (Baltimore), and—in Los Angeles—Machine Project, LA Film Forum, REDCAT, and the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS). She has also made appearances on webcasts such as EarMeal, Experimental Half-Hour, KCHUNG and dublab. Smith frequently performs electronic music under the name Stephie’s Castle, is a member of networked music ensemble bitpanic, Animal Crossing: New Horizons experimental performance group FCK82, and has composed for and performed as a member of the Dog Star Orchestra. Serving on the wulf.’s Artistic Advisory Board, she also curates and produces experimental music concerts in the Los Angeles area and on Twitch.tv.

She has studied composition at the University of Chicago with Kotoka Suzuki and earned an MFA in Experimental Sound Practices and Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts, studying with Mark Trayle, Sara Roberts, Tom Leeser, and Ulrich Krieger. In addition to her creative endeavors, she works as a software engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Press / Appearances

Review Life Cycles performance in New Classic LA "LIFE CYCLES – Friday Night at High Desert Soundings," New Classic LA, October 19, 2023

b-z-bowls featured by Perfect Circuit
"Electric + Eclectic: Stephanie Cheng Smith's b-z-bowls", May 13, 2021

Radio Interview
Interview with Velma Spell for 'The Word' radio, September 22, 2020.

Lil' Jürg Frey on BBC Sounds
The Late Junction: What's a performance without a live audience? September 18, 2020, Track 11, starts at 57:30

bell controller feature on Create Digital Music (cdm)
"Watch these makers of hybrid physical-digital music instruments – a talk from Ableton Loop", September 3, 2020

b-z-bowls review in The Wire
"Stephanie Cheng Smith/Liam Mooney/Sarah Hennies's Everything Else", The Wire, September 2020, Issue 439, p.85

Lil Jürg Frey review in The Wire
"Incorporating in-game sounds and actions into their compositions, Lil' Jürg Frey find a new way to play Animal Crossing: New Horizons," The Wire, August 2020, Issue 438, p.84

Lil Jürg Frey interviewd in Lumpen Radio's Quarantine Times
"New Horizons in Experimental Music," Quarantine Times, May 5, 2020.

Presenting bell controllers at Ableton Loop 2018
Ableton Loop 2018: Touch, Code, Play: presenting my bell controller, October 2018.

Media

Member of the Experimental Music webring

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