About John CS Keston
John CS Keston is an award winning transdisciplinary artist reimagining how music, video art, and computer science intersect. His work both questions and embraces his backgrounds in music technology, software development, and improvisation leading him toward unconventional compositions that convey a spirit of discovery and exploration through the use of graphic scores, chance and generative techniques, analog and digital synthesis, experimental sound design, signal processing, and acoustic piano. Performers are empowered to use their phonomnesis, or sonic imaginations, while contributing to his collaborative work. Originally from the United Kingdom, John currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he is a professor of Digital Media Arts at the University of St Thomas. He founded the sound design resource, AudioCookbook.org, where you will find articles and documentation about his projects and research.
John has spoken, performed, or exhibited original work at New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2022), the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2022), the International Digital Media Arts Conference (iDMAa 2022), International Sound in Science Technology and the Arts (ISSTA 2017-2019), Northern Spark (2011-2017), the Weisman Art Museum, the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Institute of Art, the Eyeo Festival, INST-INT, Echofluxx (Prague), and Moogfest. He produced and performed in the piece Instant Cinema: Teleportation Platform X, a featured project at Northern Spark 2013. He composed and performed the music for In Habit: Life in Patterns (2012) and Words to Dead Lips (2011) in collaboration with the dance company Aniccha Arts. In 2017 he was commissioned by the Walker Art Center to compose music for former Merce Cunningham dancers during the Common Time performance series. His music appears in The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (2012) and he composed the music for the short Familiar Pavement (2015). He has appeared on more than a dozen albums including two solo albums on UnearthedMusic.com.
I have agreed to release my solo album with Unearthed Music on July 28, 2009. This will correspond with exactly one years worth of entries in the One Sound Every Day category on ACB. Since all of the pieces included in this work were inspired by my almost-daily-sound-experiments, it’s a fitting date to release the fruits of my labor. The album is nearly finished and will be released under my Ostraka moniker. Before I master the album I would like to involve ACB readers in the production process by polling you for suggestions.
One of the themes I have enjoyed and learned from most in your posts is the introduction of chaos and randomness into sound while keeping it controlled and artistic. While this idea spans many posts, I suppose the one that typifies it is “Herding Random Behaviors”.
https://audiocookbook.org/sound_design/herding-random-behaviours/
Good luck with finishing the album.
@Nick Thanks, Nick! I’ll put that one under consideration.
https://audiocookbook.org/processing/zhiguly/
shameless self-promotion requires that i vote this sound post for inclusion.
@analogaries Ah, Zenrock… Yes I have to agree that was a fun session. When can we have more of those, eh?
https://audiocookbook.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/time_stretched_60_cycle_hum.mp3
dirty & awesome.
I would vote for all the unprocessed dirty rhodes samples
and, that one sound you once recorded walking up some stairs in a close space and then opening the door
ah! and the fire recording, i liked that one too!
cheers!
I’d give a vote to the Processed Rhodes Pedal Noise.
@Jeff Ah, thanks, Jeff. I like that one too.