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.
After installing Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 6 I discovered that the GMS wasn’t transmitting MIDI signals to Ableton Live via the IAC drivers. I updated the mmj drivers and noticed that two versions of the MIDI in/out devices showed up in the drop down menus. I removed the mmj drivers and found that they are no longer necessary. This is makes it a little easier to install and configure the GMS to work with Ableton Live, Reason, or other applications. If you’re running the GMS under Mac OS X 10.6 it might be worth trying the latest version of Java for Mac with the GMS v0.11. If anyone gives this a try, please let me know if it works.
I was just informed by Charles Youel about video documentation for the 2010 ARTCRANK Poster Show featuring the track Fe2O3 by Keston and Westdal (Unearthed Music, 2010). The video does a great job of capturing the vibe of the event and I love the way they worked in our track. Here’s the description posted on vimeo.
“The 4th Annual Artcrank poster show. Its an Art Show for ‘Bike People’. Bikes are the world’s most fun and accessible way to get around. Posters are the world’s most fun and accessible art form. ARTCRANK brings them together. ARTCRANK is a showcase of bicycle-inspired original poster artwork that people can enjoy looking at and afford to take home. ARTCRANK began in Minneapolis in 2007, and has expanded to Denver, St. Louis, Portland, San Francisco and Des Moines. Every ARTCRANK show features posters created by local artists from the host city. Admission is always free, and posters are priced to let everybody take home at least one. This year the Artcrank opened at Shelter Studios in NE Minneapolis. If you’re interested in hosting or sponsoring an ARTCRANK show, want to participate as a poster artist, or simply have a question that hasn’t been answered by the previous paragraphs, send us an email and we’ll be happy to help. artcrankpostershow.com“
I just got a note from Matt Musick at Vice Magazine regarding a feature on Devo just posted on Motherboard.tv. I haven’t had a chance to properly watch the entire feature, but I’ve been anticipating this, and will give it a good watch as soon as I am able. Here’s Matt’s note:
Hello John. I really think the Audio Cookbook audience would get a kick out of this piece and wanted to pass your way. The new episode of Electric Independence documents a rare look inside Devo’s studio. Mark Mothersbaugh himself gives us a tour through the space and shows us some of his favorite (and strangest) synths and circuit bending noisemakers. The guys even tell us some funny stories of their early Akron days, like the large girls (or “mother hens” as they like to call them) who would circle their equipment to warm it up before playing on those cold Ohio nights.
This weekend I built a POSC Pocket Oscillator by Sonodrome as a prototype sound design element for an interactive dance collaboration. The circuit is incredibly simple, as you can see by the photo, but the variety of sounds possible with the two pulse wave oscillators is impressive. The first oscillator is controlled by by the players skin resistance between two zinc plated contacts, while the second is controlled by an LDR (light dependent resistor). Rather than running independently the first oscillation modulates the second.
After testing the build, I temporarily setup the POSC in a small cardboard box and started making sounds. During one test I found that a circuit could be made with two people. when one person touches one contact and a second person touches the other, then the people touch each other the circuit is made with a lot of resistance creating a much slower pulse. Here’s an unprocessed sample edited out of my initial experimentation.
This Friday, April 23, 2010 at around midnight I am very excited to be performing a rare solo set at McNally Smith under my Ostraka moniker.
I’ll be using a number of custom developed tools, including the GMS and my tentatively titled WTGM (Wave-Table Glitch Machine).
The event is called Sound Crawl and is being billed as “the official sound track for Art Crawl”.
Other artists include James Patrick and Timefog, Oliver Grudem, and Minneapolis Art on Wheels. More information and a complete schedule is available at:
