Steve Roden

Steve Roden (April 27, 1964 – September 6, 2023) was an American contemporary artist and musician. He worked in the fields of sound 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 soundscapes. His discography of multiple albums and works of sound art includes Forms of Paper, which was commissioned by the Los Angeles Public Library.

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. Solo exhibitions include the Creative Media Center, City University of Hong Kong; the Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA; the Chinati Foundation, Marfa; the Henry Art Museum, Seattle; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; the San Francisco Art Institute; the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science; the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena; the Tang Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs; and the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, among others.

His work was included in exhibitions at the Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the San Francisco State University Fine Arts Gallery; the Las Vegas Art Museum; the Mercosur Biennial in Porto Allegre, Brazil; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the Serpentine Gallery, London; the Drawing Room, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla; the Sculpture Center, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou Museum, Paris; the UCLA Hammer Museum; Miami MOCA; and the Drawing Center, New York. 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.

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.