About Andrew

Baltimore City

Andrew Paul Keiper is a sound artist based in Baltimore, Maryland, where he is faculty in the Animation and Film programs at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

His recent work addresses themes including the legacy of nuclear weaponry, race and white supremacy in Baltimore, and the frontier between sound art and experimental music. Andrew’s art has spanned the gamut from painting and woodworking to video and performance, but currently he primarily… more

Rough Ride

Rough Ride is an 8-channel sound-based work that weaves together sounds from the Baltimore Uprising following the killing of Freddie Gray by the Baltimore Police and audio culled from social and mass media, along with the sounds of police surveillance, control, and violence.

This piece folds the narrative of events over itself, playing the sounds of protest, politicians' awkward, tone-deaf speeches, the breathless, pro-police biased coverage of the media, and push back against it from fed-up community members alongside audio portraying the rough ride itself, putting the listener in the position of Gray inside the van. The sounds of the Uprising rise in intensity along with the vehicular sounds of the ride towards an overwhelming, cataclysmic crescendo. These sounds play out from six speakers on a 16 foot long shelf, offering no opportunity to hear and comprehend the entire sequence of events from any given position. The listener must choose what they will hear, and what they will avoid hearing. Above, the sound of the Baltimore Police Foxtrot helicopters unceasingly play from three speakers hung from the celling, a constant reminder of the surveillance state, and the violence that flows from it.
  • rough-ride.jpg
    rough-ride.jpg
  • rough-ride-installation-view-2.jpg
    rough-ride-installation-view-2.jpg
  • rough-ride-listeners.jpg
    rough-ride-listeners.jpg
  • rough-ride-installation-view-1.jpg
    rough-ride-installation-view-1.jpg
  • Rough Ride sound installation documentation

Manhattan Project

This 5-channel sound-based workfrom 2016 was prompted by the life of Andrew's, Lovell Cardenas. An engineer, Lovell helped to develop the first nuclear weapons during World War II as an employee of the Manhattan Project. He was secretive about his work, as he was about much else in his life.


Manhattan Project seeks to evoke the creation of the atomic bomb from the perspective of an engineer, enmeshed in the defining political conflicts of the era. The droning of calutrons used to enrich uranium and the 44.4 second long free fall of the bomb find their place alongside propaganda, crooner Perry Como, and the "Internationale" in the soundscape of the piece.

  • Manhattan Project
    This 5-channel sound-based work was prompted by the life of my grandfather, Lovell Cardenas. An engineer, Lovell helped to develop the first nuclear weaponry during World War II as an employee of the Manhattan Project. He was secretive about his work, as he was about much else in his life – Lovell was a communist working within the military industrial complex, and maintained romantic liaisons outside his marriage. Manhattan Project seeks to evoke the creation of the atomic bomb from the perspective of an engineer, enmeshed in the defining political conflicts of his era. The droning of calutrons used to enrich uranium and the 44.4 second long free fall of the bomb find their place alongside propaganda, crooner Perry Como, and the Internationale in the soundscape of the piece.
  • Manhattan Project (installation view)
    Manhattan Project (installation view)
  • Manhattan Project (installation view)
    Manhattan Project (installation view)
    Manhattan Project (installation view), as installed in MICA's Meyerhoff Gallery in 2016.
  • Manhattan Project takeaway cards
    Manhattan Project takeaway cards
  • Manhattan Project (installation view)
    Manhattan Project (installation view)
  • Manhattan Project (installation view)
    Manhattan Project (installation view)
  • Manhattan Project (installation view)
    Manhattan Project (installation view)