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.

GMS on CreativeApplications.net

Posted on June 18, 2010 by John CS Keston

CreativeApplications.net has posted an article about the GMS. If you’re not familar, CreativeApplications.net (CAN) is a blog founded by Filip Visnjic. From the CAN about page:

Aim of CreativeApplications.Net is to bring together applications that challenge the ways how we share and engage with information. By scouting the web, CAN brings you best in creative app development and thinking. CreativeApplications.Net is platform independent. We look at OSX, Windows, Linux, iPhone, Web Apps, Flash, Physical Interfaces, Max MSP development, Processing and many others.

Filip was a speaker at Flashbelt 2010. During his presentation he showed a variety of fascinating work by his students and more featured on CAN. I was lucky enough to introduce him at the conference and experience his session. Checkout CreativeApplications.net for more.

André Michelle at Flashbelt 2010

Posted on June 17, 2010 by John CS Keston

Yesterday I had the distinct pleasure of introducing André Michelle at the Flashbelt conference in Minneapolis. André is the lead developer of Audiotool. If you’re not familiar with Audiotool it is, in my view, the best web based audio production application I have ever seen. The bulk of André’s presentation involved showing Flash built demos of advanced audio functionality, like granular synthesis, guitar modeling, and using physical modeling to influence sounds and sequences.

Toward the end of his presentation he brought Audiotool into the mix. Audiotool is an application built in Flash. The nearest thing I could compare it to is Reason. The biggest difference is that it runs on the web. This allows for social media opportunities that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. Instruments built into Audiotool, include very convincing emulation of several popular Roland devices, like the TR-808 and the TB-303. It also includes a modular synth called Pulverisateur and a number of effect processors.

Finally, there is an audio track module that allows you to bring in samples stored within a pretty big library provided by Loopmasters. You can’t bring in your own samples yet, but André assured us it was in the works.

André played me a few examples of some of his favorite user generated tracks from Audiotool and I was very impressed with the sound quality and scope. It’s easy to dismiss a web based audio application as a novelty, but the community around it is creating some totally professional sounding stuff that can’t be ignored.

Exquisite Robot Opening with Ostraka

Posted on June 15, 2010 by John CS Keston

This Saturday, June 19, 2010 from 7-10pm I’ll be performing at the opening night reception for Exquisite Robot, artwork by members of Rogue Citizen.

I’ll be performing solo material under my Ostraka moniker. Unicorn Dream Attack is also making music at the event. This event is free, and open to the public.

“Exquisite corpse” was originally developed as a game played by prominent Surrealists in France. The artists of Rogue Citizen have embraced this format to explore their own 21st century paranoid visions.

They capture the terror and excitement of new possibilities with their shared passions for drawing, experimental imagery and abstraction, playing an old game for a new world. All work in the exhibition will be available for purchase.

Location:
Stevens Square Center for the Arts
1905 Third Avenue South
Minneapolis, Minnesota

The Somethin’ Else Electronic Music Potluck

Posted on June 9, 2010 by John CS Keston

This Friday, June 11, 2010 is the first in a series of events put on by Jon Davis called The Somethin’ Else. This instance is subtitled Odd Couples and features duets that have one artist producing electronics with a second, in contrast, mostly acoustic player. The performers include the following:

Jon Davis & Elaine Evans
Brett Bullion & Chris Smalley (Burnsville)
Steve Goldstein & Scott Fultz
Tim Glenn & Jeremy Ylvisaker (Siamese Bug)
John Keston & Graham O’Brien (Ostracon)
Adam J To & Dejen Tesfagiorgis

The event is located at the Stevens Square Center for the Arts, 1905 3rd Ave S., Minneapolis, MN (above the 3rd Ave. Market). The music starts at 7pm and goes until 10pm. All ages are welcome. A $5.00 cover is optional if you bring food or drink to share. It’s a potluck!

I’m excited to be performing at the show with my project Ostracon (John Keston on electronics and Graham O’Brien on drums) at 7:30pm. Expect to hear some angular GMS layers combined with Graham’s on-the-verge-of-chaotic drumming.

Sound Builders: Inventor of Circuit Bending Reed Ghazala

Posted on June 3, 2010 by John CS Keston

I’m really enjoying the Sound Builder series on Motherboard.tv, but this episode is brilliant. Now if I could just get the real-time version of that sped up footage! For more about Reed Ghazala checkout his bio and sounds from his instruments on anti-theory.com.