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Bio
Steven Parker is an artist that works with salvaged musical instruments, amateur choirs, marching bands, urban bat colonies, flocks of grackles, and pedicab fleets to investigate systems of control, interspecies behavior, and forgotten histories. He is the recipient of the Rome Prize, the Tito’s Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, the Pollock-Krasner Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a
2023 McKnight Visiting Composer with the American Composers Forum. Parker’s projects include elaborate civic rituals for humans, animals, and machines; listening sculptures modeled after obsolete surveillance tools; and cathartic transportation symphonies for operators of cars, pedicabs, and bicycles. Exhibition and performance highlights include the American Academy in Rome (Italy), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Arkansas), CUE Art Foundation (New York), the Fusebox Festival (Texas), Gwangju Media Art Festival (Korea), the Lincoln Center Festival, Los Angeles
Philharmonic inSIGHT, the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), MASS MoCA (Massachusetts), the McNay Art Museum (Texas), Rich Mix (London), SXSW, and Tanglewood (Massachusetts). As a soloist and as an artist of NYC-based "new music dream team" Ensemble Signal, he has premiered 200+ new works. Parker’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Colossal, and Design Milk, among others. He is Executive Director of Collide Arts, curator of SoundSpace at the Blanton, and faculty member at UTSA. He holds degrees in Math and Music from Oberlin, Rice, and UT Austin.

Residency Project
Through his five-month project Sheng Rebirth, Steve combines musical craftsmanship from both the U.S. and Taiwan, using discarded materials to create a series of hybrid instrument-sculpture installations.The project expands the possibilities of both instrument design and sculptural practice.


Exhibition Overview - 「笙聲生」
笙聲生（shēng shēng shēng）／Sheng Rebirth
What happens to an instrument when its voice dies? In Sheng Rebirth, discarded instruments are made into vessels for transformation and memory.  
Over the past four months, Steve Parker collected instruments from Taipei's flea markets and recycling centers. He found broken shengs (笙), guzhengs (古筝), and a ruan (阮) — instruments that had once sung with the breath and touch of musicians. He reanimated them with dried plant matter, recordings of tree frogs, and small DC motors.
These instruments now speak with new voices. Joining the ensemble is the Taipei tree frog. Also a product of metamorphosis, the frog serves as an oracle, its call carrying songs of past and future ecological health. Guest musicians from Taipei and viewer interaction complete the work by activating the sculptures. 
Sheng Rebirth is situated in the mythological forest. This is the site for tales of transformation across cultures: where Eastern nobles meditate among sacred trees and Western heroes enter the wilderness to emerge changed. The musical instruments in the exhibition channel these narratives of metamorphosis. Unlike the phoenix's dramatic ascent, these rebirths emerge softly, through strange, delicate sounds their mkers never intended.
Drawing from the mythical origins of the sheng, Sheng Rebirth explores the paradox of the phoenix legend: To be reborn, one must first embrace death and abandonment. 
Transformation rarely arrives through spectacle. Instead it unfolds through the slow, deliberate act of reassembling what remains.

Info
Steve Parker Residency Exhibition:Sheng Rebirth
Exhibition Period: July 24 (Thu) – August 3 (Sun), 2025
* By appointment only. Please use the link above to reserve your visit.
Location: KCCA_Chengde
Address: No. 131, Sec. 3, Chengde Rd., Datong District, Taipei City
Organizer｜ King Car Cultural & Educational Foundation / King Car Cultural & Art Center (KCCA)

Courtesy of Steve Parker & Asian Cultural Council
Compiled and edited by Amber Wu