Matt Steinke is an interdisciplinary artist based in Rhode Island who investigates the real-time interplay between visible and invisible spaces through sculpture, sound, and technology. Drawing from personal experiences with synesthesia and sound improvisation, he activates installations with mechatronic sculptures and robotic musical instruments. His work incorporates animations, graphic scores, and text-based compositions, creating layered, multisensory experiences.
Growing up near a hazardous waste storage facility, the Johnson Space Center and the oil fields of East Texas—a region where pastoral landscapes intersect with industrial complexes—Steinke’s work amalgamates ecology with technology. He examines boundaries between active and passive, living and nonliving, reimagining the agency of objects within broader systems.
In Niet Stil (2022), mechanized sculptures informed by Dutch still-life paintings engage with the tension between form and function, while Deliriums (2020) uses robotic instruments to represent fragmented mental states from DSM-5 personality clusters. Both works explore complex systems using improvisation to raise questions about the cultural spaces of ecology and psychology.
Steinke’s integration of technological innovation with traditional sculpture and readymade objects takes cues from neuropsychology, product design, and electronic theory. The autonomous devices within his work propose alternative futures, offering a neurodiverse perspective through synesthetic experiments and nonlinear metaphors. Balancing meditation, humor, and horror, his work invites reflection on the tangled interactions between subjects, objects, and the unseen systems that shape them.
Over the past two decades, Steinke’s work has been presented in museums, galleries, festivals, and DIY venues across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. He holds an MFA in Art and Technology Studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Upon graduation in 2004, he received The Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Interdisciplinary/Computer Art. He was a juror’s finalist and Seed Grant recipient for ArtPrize 2016 and a 2015 New Music USA Project Grant recipient. He received an award at the 2018 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition for his “Stepper Rattle” instrument. He was a founding member of 1990s post-rock-noise bands including Mocket, Satisfact, and Octant. He wrote, recorded, and released over ten albums for Kill Rockstars, K, and Up records while collaborating with recording artists, The Need, Miranda July, and Joe Preston.
In 2021, he worked with the Portuguese sound art collective, Sonoscopia, to develop ”Artificialia”, a large-scale multimedia installation at the Teatro Municipal do Porto, and presented his solo installation, “Hazardous Phenotypes”, at the Festival Internacional de Marionetas do Porto.”His sound sculpture, Earplugs, was exhibited in 2022 at the Contemporary Austin Jones Center, and his solo exhibition, Un-Verb, was presented in 2022 at Northern-Southern Gallery.”
His work has been featured in Artweek LA, The Village Voice, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Wired, and on the cover of Tape Op.
Selected Press/Reviews
Not Real Art April 2023: Hazardous Phenotypes
NPR KUT Austin: Arts Eclectic
Tape Op May/June 2001: Octant: On Hotrodding Playskool Toys
Glass Tire: Un-verb
Sonoscopia Artificialia
Sitelines: Reverse Plane of Cloudy
The Austin Chronicle Arts: Deliriums
2018 M. Guthman Instrument Competition
Vice: 2016 Guthman Competition
The Civilians: Noplace
ArtPrize: The Magnetosphere
Hackaday: The Tine Organ
Theremin World: Octant