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.

Simple Wavetable Oscillation with Max/MSP

Posted on September 20, 2009 by John CS Keston

wavetable_oscillator For my second entry in the One Max Patch Per Week category I’ve created a very simple, monophonic, wavetable oscillator.

Although it hasn’t been a week since my last patch, I’m going to allow myself to produce more than one example per week, if I happen to have the time available. To create output from the patch I loaded a rim shot sample using the read button into the buffer object. After that I turned on the dac and dragged the mouse around on the keyboard, known as the kslider object in Max.

The kslider sends velocity data from the bottom right outlet. The velocity values are determined by the vertical position of the mouse on each key. I scaled the velocities to 100 through 127 so that I wouldn’t get very quiet notes while dragging near the bottom of the keyboard. View the comments to copy the compressed patcher.

Simple Wavetable Oscillator

Mapping Pitch and Amplitude to the Track Pad with Max/MSP

Posted on September 17, 2009 by John CS Keston

trackpad_to_pitch_and_amplitude Currently I’m taking a graduate class in Max/MSP/Jitter at the University of Minnesota with Ali Momeni. Recent experiences including a night class in July at CNMAT (the Center for New Music and Audio Technology, UC Berkeley), and this current class at the U are really opening up my eyes (and ears) to the possibilities of Max 5. As a result I’m becoming more and more convinced that this is the ideal platform for the kind of projects I’m currently interested in.

The workload in the class is intense, but I have decided to punish myself even further by committing to post the audio output of at least one Max patch per week on Audio Cookbook in a new category called One Max Patch Per Week. It’s not quite as ambitious as my One Sound Every Day project, but with my busy schedule I should be able to keep up the pace.

Here’s my first entry into this new category. It is a simple way to map the input from the track pad or a mouse to the pitch and amplitude of a sinusoidal sound wave. For the patch I used the “pictslider” object, which outputs the x and y coordinates as scaled values.

I mapped the x coordinate to pitch with a range of values between 200 and 800 Hertz, and the Y to the amplitude with the typical MIDI based values of 0 to 127. I’ve included a screen grab of the patch so you can see how simple it was to do this.

Track Pad to Pitch and Amplitude

Ostraka with Dial System and Keston and Westdal Performances

Posted on September 16, 2009 by John CS Keston

I have a few performances coming up. One at the end of the month and two at the begining of October. Here’s the official word from Unearthed Music on the upcoming events:

Unearthed Music has a few upcoming events we thought you’d like to know about. On Monday, September 28, John Keston is celebrating his birthday by performing with Graham O’Brien on drums as, Ostraka with Dial System at the Kitty Cat Klub. The duet combines the stochastic, angular melodies produced by Keston’s custom music software with live drumming. Gestural video input is simultaneously projected onto a screen and processed into musical phrases. The results are live looped and molded into spontaneous compositions. Expert, veteran turntablist, DJ Zenrock, completes the bill.

Keston and Wedstdal with Graham O’Brien on drums are performing back-to-back events at Sauce with House Luna and Honey Stick (Thursday, October 1, 2009, $5.00) and the Dakota late night (Friday, October 2, 2009, $5.00). Sauce is located in Uptown on Lake and Lyndale and the Dakota is on Nicolet Mall in Downtown Minneapolis.

More Information:
http://www.unearthedmusic.com/?source=shows.php

Recent Releases on UEM:
http://www.unearthedmusic.com/?source=releases.php

Excerpt from Solo Set at MAW Party

Posted on September 11, 2009 by John CS Keston

beat_box_insides Recently I was invited to perform during a rare indoors Minneapolis Art on Wheels event at the West Bank Social Club, a new media artist space above the Nomad in Minneapolis. The space contained a newer (1970s) Hammond organ, sans tone wheels and drawbars, with an after market analog beat box including buttons for “Rock 1”, “Rock 2”, “Rumba”, and more. The idea was to do a bit of improvising on the organ while various projections went on inside and outside the space.

I brought my laptop with Ableton and started by sampling all the patterns on the analog beat box. I also brought along my iPod Touch running Bebot to make some live loops to go along with the beats. Here’s an excerpt from the set. The only sound sources used were Bebot and and the Hammond analog beat box.

MAW Party Ostraka Set Excerpt

Dreams in High Fidelity

Posted on September 1, 2009 by John CS Keston

esheep_grab2 If you’re not familiar with the Electric Sheep screen saver by Scott Draves I highly recommend that you check it out. His software renders beautiful sequences of animated fractal geometry. As a screen saver user, you can vote on your favorite animations, causing them to “live” longer and get added to a “gene pool” to “breed” with others using genetic algorithms. What does this have to do with sound? Well, it looks as though a musical performance is scheduled to premiere in Brooklyn, New York on September 3rd, 2009, that combines Scott’s amazing visuals with live musical accompaniment. Details about the performance can be found here: