Bio.
Short Bio
Michele Cheng is an intermedia artist, multi-instrumentalist, and puppeteer intertwining music, visuals, and theatre to engage with social issues and cultural identities. As an artist-scholar, she develops work that shines light on underrepresented narratives through critical inquiry, journalistic approaches, and worldbuilding. Her work has been featured at National Sawdust (US), Roulette (US), MATA Festival (US), CCRMA (US), NYCEMF (US), Bing Concert Hall (US), OCMA (US), Harvard Art Museums (US), Emerson Paramount Theatre (US), Puppet Power (Canada), ICMC (Chile), ESPACIOS (Argentina), ISSTA (Ireland), Accidental Theatre (UK), Sonorities (UK), eavesdropping (UK), MBA Dijon (France), Podium Gigant (Netherlands), 33 OC (Italy), NTCH (Taiwan), SAC (South Korea), and BACC (Thailand), among others. She was a JACK Studio artist, a recipient of the New Music USA Creator Fund; and an associate artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts residency. Michele builds custom instruments and puppets and works with artists across cultural practices. Her writings can be found in Leonardo (MIT Press, 2026) and I Care If You Listen (American Composers Forum, 2021). She is a co-founder of the intermedia duo Meoark, feminist media artists led improv collective fff, and punk duo Chaos Theory.
Photo by Hassan Estakhrian
Long Bio
Michele Cheng is an intermedia artist, multi-instrumentalist, and puppeteer intertwining music, visuals, and theatre to engage with social issues and cultural identities. As an artist-scholar, she develops creative work that shines light on underrepresented narratives through critical inquiry, journalistic approaches, and workdbuilding. Examples of her work include: Multiverse, an intermedia work with live green screen, projection, music, and mask puppet; Doyennes' Diaries, an electroacoustic work with custom instruments and diaries from women-identified artists; A Different Reality, a multiyear project examining today’s world through the lens of younger generations; Speed Dating, a three-screen audiovisual work in ambisonics with puppetry about Asian American's dating culture; and OMW, a documentary film about four 1.5 generation Taiwanese-American artists in Greater Los Angeles.
She was a JACK Studio artist (2020-2022) commissioned by the JACK Quartet, a commissioned composer for National Sawdust’s Digital Discovery Festival; a recipient of New Music USA Creator Fund; and an associate artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts residency. Michele was a winner in Digital Music for the u19 Award, a media arts competition hosted by Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). u19 Award was modeled after the u19- CREATE YOUR WORLD at Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, where she visited as a representative in 2007.
Her works have been featured at MBA Dijon Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon (FR), Accidental Theatre (UK), Podium Gigant (NL), 33 OC Officina Creativa (IT), AMKL Lipiński Academy of Music (PL), SAC Seoul Arts Center (KR), NTCH National Theatre & Concert Hall (TW), BACC Bangkok Art & Culture Centre (TH), National Sawdust (US), Roulette (US), Bing Concert Hall (US), CCRMA Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (US), HAM Harvard Art Museums (US), OCMA Orange County Museum of Arts (US), CCA Cornell Council for the Arts (US), xMPL Experimental Media Performance Lab (US), Emerson Paramount Theatre (US); and festivals including MATA Festival (US), ICMC International Computer Music Conference (CL), Sonorities Festival Belfast (UK), ISSTA Sonic Practice Now (IE), MANTIS Festival (UK), NYCEMF The New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (US), ESPACIOS SONOROS (AR), New Music Gathering (US), eavesdropping symposium (UK), UCI Illuminations (US), Puppet Power (CA), among others.
She has worked with International Contemporary Ensemble, JACK Quartet, orkest de ereprijs, Ensemble Instrumental de l'ESM Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, NOMON, TAK Ensemble, wear yellow proudly, alokori, Taipei Symphony Orchestra, Baroque Camerata, Ian Rosenbaum (percussionist), Levy Lorenzo (percussionist), Anna Elder (soprano), Nathan Mondry (organist), and Simona Fitcal (media artist). As a multi-instrumentalist, Michele has shared the stage with International Contemporary Ensemble, Sō Percussion, Taiko Center of Los Angeles, Antenna Fuzz, Pamela Z, Craig Taborn, Claire Chase, Susie Ibarra, Joshua Rubin, and Levy Lorenzo. As a performance artist, she has worked with the LA Hungry Ghost Festival (puppeteer and voice actor), OTHER/WORLD (puppeteer), and West Hollywood Dance Festival (martial artist).
Her essay "Reimagining Accessibility and Inclusivity in Virtual Events" (2021) was commissioned by the American Composers Forum for I Care If You Listen’s Casting Light series. Her journal paper "Multiverse: Reframing Vulnerable Realities through Intermedia Storytelling and Fluidity" was published by journal Leonardo through the MIT Press in 2026.
She was a TK-3 music educator at public elementary schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, a program specialist at a children museum, and a teaching intern at Orange Coast College. She has taught as a teaching assistant at School of the Arts and School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, the College of Arts & Sciences at Cornell University, and the Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. She has given guest talks at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Western Ontario (UWO), National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU), National Chung Cheng University (CCU), and National Yunlin University of Science and Technology (NYUST).
Michele holds an M.F.A. in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology (ICIT) from the University of California, Irvine working with Nicole Mitchell, Michael Dessen, Chris Dobrian, Kojiro Umezaki, and Lukas Ligeti. She received her B.F.A. in Applied Music/Theory and Composition from National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan where she worked with Szu-Hsien Lee and Kwang-I Ying. She is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry (CPCI) with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice (CMP) at Harvard University working with Vijay Iyer, Yvette Janine Jackson, Jessie Cox, and Claire Chase.
Michele is a co-founder of the intermedia duo Meoark, interdisciplinary improv collective fff led by feminist media artists, and punk duo Chaos Theory with fellow multi-instrumentalist Micah Huang.