Ostracon Debut Excerpt: Photon Coercion

Posted on May 8, 2011 by John Keston

Here’s an excerpt of the second track from the upcoming Ostracon debut album, Unauthorized Modifications. This track is titled Photon Coercion. The album consists of drumming by Graham O’Brien and electronic sound that I produced using GMS, or Gestural Music Sequencer. GMS is Open Source software I developed that converts video signals into musical phrases. A video signal is analysed in real-time and then MIDI notes are produced based on brightness tracking and adjustable probability distribution algorithms.

This excerpt, in addition to looped phrases from GMS, includes a lead melodic voice that I played on the touch based synthesizer, Bebot. I fell in love with the expressive way you can bend notes independently on up to five voices (an impossibility on most conventional keyboards – unless you have one of these) using Bebot.

Photon Coercion (excerpt)

Eyeo Festival June 27-29, 2011

Posted on January 26, 2011 by John Keston

In late June 2011 I will be presenting the GMS and Grain Machine, as well as performing with Ostracon, at the Eyeo Festival. Eyeo is a new festival organized by Dave Schroeder, that includes an ever expanding and incredible list of speakers. I am honored, humbled and invigorated to be participating in this event. Here’s a blurb from the festival website:

“eyeo brings together the most creative coders, designers and artists working today, and shaping tomorrow – expect an amazing three days of talks, labs, demos & events fueled by the people and tools that are transforming digital culture.”

Just to give you an idea of the scope of the presenters, both Ben Fry and Casey Reas, founders of the Processing.org language (that I used to build the GMS) are on the roster among many other brilliant talents. Checkout the website for a list of the presenters so far. Here’s a track from the upcoming Ostracon album to illustrate what we’re producing.

Entropy Procedure by Ostracon

Generative Sequence Driving MDA JX10 Emulator

Posted on January 21, 2011 by John Keston

I created the following generative sequence using GMS (click for details), during a solo performance at the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art, October 2010. One of the virtual instruments I used in the set is an Open Source, Roland Super JX10 emulator made by MDA. The Roland Super JX10 was one of the last great analog poly-synths produced by Roland, and the first Roland synth to receive velocity and aftertouch treatment on the 76 key keyboard. Although I never owned one of these, I have played one before, and I imagine that programming them was brain surgery without the optional PG-800 programmer. In the documentation for the MDA JX10 they state, “[this] plug-in is designed for high quality (lower aliasing than most soft synths) and low processor usage – this means that some features that would increase CPU load have been left out”. To me this plugin sounds very good. I’d like to hear from anyone who owns or has played a Roland Super JX10 for their perspective on this instrument.

MDA JX10 Emulator

Video by Jon Davis of an Ostracon Performance

Posted on December 20, 2010 by John Keston

I just came across this five minute video shot by Ghostband artist Jon Davis on his mobile phone of my duet project Ostracon performing at the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis on July 17, 2010. I’ve been enjoying a lot of these lofi videos that Jon puts up on YouTube, and it reminds me of a quote I read recently from David Byrne in the liner notes for My Life in the Bush of Ghosts: “…we came to realize that high fidelity was a vastly over-rated convention that noboby had bothered to question…”. I can’t agree more, except that today, thankfully, it is being questioned more than ever.

Ostraka Solo Set at Spark Festival Saturday, October 2, 2010

Posted on September 27, 2010 by John Keston

The Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts is starting this Wednesday, September 29, and continues through Saturday, October 2, 2010. The festival this year includes yet another impressive array of artists.

I will be performing a solo Ostraka set on Saturday, October 2, prior to Caly McMorrow, and the amazing Fred Frith. Unbelievably, all of the performances and exhibits are free and open to the public. Checkout the Spark Festival website for details.

I’ll be performing at the Love Power Church, 1407 South Washington Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota, upstairs at 6:30pm on Saturday, October 2 just before Caly McMorrow.