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.
This feedback produced by my new MacBook Pro is a little less harsh. I attempted to control the way it was feeding back by moving a cupped hand up and down just above the built-in mic hidden under the left hand speaker grill. The closer you get to the cupping the mic the louder the feedback is. Actually I wasn’t sure where the mic was when I started this experiment and used my cupped hand to locate it. By the way, cupping the mic is generally a bad idea. I hope it doesn’t void my warrantee.
The following sound contains piercing high frequencies. I don’t suggest playing it back at at anything higher than a very low volume.
This sound was produced accidentally after starting up Live and opening a recent document on my new MacBook Pro. A couple of tracks were record enabled and the input settings reverted to the default because Live 8 did not know about my external sound card yet. Luckily my MacBook Pro’s audio out was not plugged into my mixer, so the sound was only amplified through the internal speakers.
Naturally, my first inclination was to capture the feedback. My second was to try and control it by cupping the mic hidden under the left hand speaker grill. I had some success doing this. For now here’s the original feedback.
Unearthed Music has made all of Precambrian Resonance available as full-length 128kbps MP3 previews on Unearthed Music. The entire album is also streaming on last.fm. Here’s track eight, Hamamatsu No. G210. You might remember a rough mix of it from an earlier entry, which revealed how the title came about, and mentioned a release date of March 24, 2009. So, technically I’m four months late on this project. Although negotiating postponement was not an issue, since I’m a label partner. In any case, it’s done and I’m happy with the results.
Recently I have been endowed with a fortunate amount of new gear. After upgrading to Ableton Suite 8 it became apparent that my first-gen MacBook Pro was not going to pull the plough. So I have upgraded to the latest model. I have yet to put 8 through its paces to see how well it performs on the new machine, but I have found some time to get it installed and play around a bit.
This audio experiment is a result of that. It consists of a patch I created using the MDA JX-10 emulator. I did little to process it other than some delay, but I used a Korg nanoKONTROL to control the filter and volume of the device. Before I attached the controller I was playing with the filter using the track pad on the Mac. When I wasn’t getting the control I wanted I hooked up the nanoKONTROL and felt a bit more confident manipulating the cutoff and resonance with knobs.
Lately I’ve been experimenting with iPod Touch applications for recording sound. Generally it’s necessary to use a headset to make a recording, but my goal is to figure out a practical way to bypass the headset with an input for a high quality microphone. While unsuccessfully testing my Audio Technica AT822 stereo mic as an input for the iPod Touch I captured an interesting glitch within the application I was testing.
The low frequency waveform (shown in the image at the left) played at regular intervals while I had the microphone attached. Perhaps it’s some sort of communication protocol for headset controls. I removed the DC offset, but otherwise left it as it was. Perhaps I’ll try playing it back at some higher frequencies to see it’s useful for anything musically.
This feedback produced by my new MacBook Pro is a little less harsh. I attempted to control the way it was feeding back by moving a cupped hand up and down just above the built-in mic hidden under the left hand speaker grill. The closer you get to the cupping the mic the louder the feedback is. Actually I wasn’t sure where the mic was when I started this experiment and used my cupped hand to locate it. By the way, cupping the mic is generally a bad idea. I hope it doesn’t void my warrantee.
Unearthed Music has made all of 
Recently I have been endowed with a fortunate amount of new gear. After upgrading to 
Lately I’ve been experimenting with iPod Touch applications for recording sound. Generally it’s necessary to use a headset to make a recording, but my goal is to figure out a practical way to bypass the headset with an input for a high quality microphone. While unsuccessfully testing my Audio Technica AT822 stereo mic as an input for the iPod Touch I captured an interesting glitch within the application I was testing.