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.

Generative, Animated, Graphic Scores for Parking Ramp Project

Posted on September 12, 2018 by John CS Keston

This video is one of the six generative, animated, graphic scores that I have composed for Parking Ramp Project. The music was performed live and recorded while the screen was being captured. This piece is called Connected. Colored circles are generated on the screen with connecting lines. One of the three colors is randomly selected to change the color of circles with which it collides. Once all the circles are the same color they fade away and a new set is generated with a different color as the changer. This continues for seven minutes.

Musicians respond to this score by producing a sound event when circles of their assigned color collide with another circle or the boundaries of the screen. This process produces phrases with arbitrary yet continuous rhythmic patterns. The dimensions, velocity, x-axis, and y-axis of each circle serve as parameters that can be interpreted and applied to the frequency, timbre, dynamics and/or duration of the sound event. This interpretation is left up to the discretion of the musicians.

Purple = Peter Hennig (Drums)
Grey = Cody McKinney (Bass / Electronics)
Green / Cyan = John C.S. Keston (Rhodes / Synths)

Bloodline will be performing the music live for the piece, directed by Aniccha Arts choreographer Pramila Vasudevan, with nearly fifty dancers at a parking ramp near the Mall of America, September 29th and 30th, 2018. Learn more about Parking Ramp Project below: Continue reading →

Panic by Proxy at the Walker Art Center

Posted on August 21, 2018 by John CS Keston

PANIC BY PROXY is an audiovisual composition produced in collaboration with Syrian architect and multidisciplinary artist Khaled Alwarea. The piece is a long distance response and “musical” reimagining of Alwarea’s film Panic Attack. I will be making the debut performance of the piece at the Walker Art Center this Thursday, August 23, 2018.

The performance will feature audiovisual objects provided by Alwarea projected and amplified while being granulated in real-time along with electronic accompaniment. The dissonance, distortion, and uncanny synchronization illicit feelings of disturbance and confusion as an expression of the artist’s anxiety.

This video is a 0:45 clip from the 30 minute piece that demonstrates the audiovisual granular synthesis technique used to process the video in real-time. Ginormous thank-you’s go to Esmaa Imady for inviting me to participate in the event, Khaled Alwarea for his amazing film work, and Emily Gastineau at MN Artists for organizing the event.

Read more about Esmaa Imady and the other artists participating in this event on Hyperallergic.

Natural Woman Aretha Franklin Tribute

Posted on August 18, 2018 by John CS Keston

I took a little time out today to play this tribute to Aretha Franklin on my out of tune Rhodes electric piano. I can’t imagine a world without Aretha’s voice. Dear Aretha, thank you for your amazing music. You are immortalized in admiration and will be missed.

Sound / Simulacra: Lucas Melchior Recordings

Posted on July 10, 2018 by John CS Keston

Please enjoy these recordings from our second set at Sound / Simulacra featuring Lucas Melchior, May 23, 2018.

Sound / Simulacra: Davu Seru

Posted on July 3, 2018 by John CS Keston

On Wednesday, July 25th, 2018 Sound / Simulacra at Jazz Central Studios will feature Davu Seru. This monthly series in collaboration with Cody McKinney explores musical improvisation as a “faithful and intentionally distorted” representational process. Sound / Simulacra brings together some of the Twin Cities most unique voices to “recreate, distort, and create the hyperreal.”

Set I – Davu Seru (percussion)

Set II – Davu Seru (percussion) + John Keston (piano, Rhodes, synthesizers, electronics) + Cody McKinney (bass, voice, synthesizer, electronics)

Improvising musician, percussionist, and award-winning composer, Davu Seru, performs regularly in the Twin Cities and abroad as a jazz musician. Like many jazz-rooted musicians influenced by “new music” experiments with extended technique, his approach to the drum set is as much nostalgic as it is technophilic. Consequently, his style is striking for its attending to sound, silence and melodic line as much it does rhythmic pattern—and as a skilled ensemble player he is known for his “big ears.” In the past fifteen years those ears have afforded Davu the opportunity to perform and record with musicians such as Milo Fine, Anthony Cox, George Cartwright, Dean Magraw, Paul Metzger, Jack Wright, Douglas R. Ewart, Evan Parker, Donald Washington, Nicole Mitchell and Rafael Toral.

Beside any number of spontaneous ad-hoc groupings, Davu currently leads No Territory Band and works in a trio with French clarinetist Catherine Delaunay and French bassist Guillaume Seguron. He has also curated concerts series for improvised music (in Chicago and Minneapolis) and collaborates in multi-media performances with dancers and visual artists.