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 created this polyphonic wind sound on the Roland MKS-80 using the Bitstream 3X to manually modulate the filter to give it a more natural and irregular sounding whistle. I did this rather than using the LFO because although I could adjust the rate the sweep would be automated and too regular instead of being based on human judgement. I am presenting it here in mono with no processing. If I were to use this I would process it in several ways including some volume automation, panning, equalization, probably a bit of slap back delay for stereo imaging, and a fairly short linear reverb that doesn’t sound too roomy.
I accidentally created this pack of cyber wolves on the Super Jupiter. I was dialing in sounds while watching the oscilloscope and getting all sorts of crunchy delights when all of a sudden I was hearing these eerie howls. Fortunately I was recording all along, so afterward I edited it down to the best bits and uploaded it for your enjoyment.
Here’s another example that fits into the stacked polyphonic synthesis series I started on April 4, 2011 with Stacked Polysynths Part 1. This time I played a chord progression while recording rather than adjusting parameters in realtime, making it into a micro-track of sorts. The fifths sounds was on the D-50 while the filter sweeping sound is something I dialed in on the MKS-80.
One of the several software features available with the MOTU Audio Express is the oscilloscope. I shot this video of it visualizing a pulse wave being modulated and filtered on the MKS-80.
This 1:52 minute segment of improvisation from the DGK performance at Try This 2 on March 25, 2011 contains drums by Tim Glenn, Soprano Sax by Jon Davis, and jumble sale of gear played by yours truly. These instrument include, in order of appearance, the Sequential Circuits Pro-One, followed by the Korg Monotron, my handmade Sonodrome Posc, and my Max for Live, granular synth, Grain Machine. Prior to this performance I had been limiting my palette of textures to the Rhodes and the Pro-One, but for this performance I thought I would try including the Monotron, Posc, and Grain Machine in order to draw from a few more atonal colors.
