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.
Translation: Yet Another GMS Micro Track. Many of these experiments are all starting to sound very similar. The reason why is that I’ve been doing all my testing with the same GMS preset file and the same set of virtual instruments in Ableton Live.
Soon, after I’ve slowed down on tailoring the code, I’ll start creating some new versions of things to see what sort of variety is possible. I also have plans for using these techniques in an ensemble.
Here’s a set of crunchy footsteps recorded in a wooded area. There’s a bit of wind noise, but it otherwise represents the sound of trailblazing through a thick, young forest.
I recently had the opportunity to gather some horse neighs, whinnies and snorts at an equestrian event. Apparently, when separating a horse from other horses it identifies as part of it’s herd, it will neigh or whinny more frequently. I was holding Tennessee while his friend Ginger was competing in a dressage competition.
I switched on my recorder to capture his vocalized separation anxiety. He wasn’t too anxious because most of the time he spent eating grass. However, every so often he’d take a break from grazing to protest his situation with a whinny or snort. I edited them all close together, but each sound was recorded at a different level, so be prepared for some volume changes.
Plains cottonwood (Populus sargentii) grows near water, and tends to mimic water in several ways. Visually their leaves ripple in the wind like water rippling on a fairly still pond. The sound of the wind through their leaves also mimics water flowing in a stream. I recorded a gentle wind passing through a small grove of cottonwoods near a swamp full of cattails, birds, insects and amphibians. My wind sock for the PCM-D50 didn’t provide all the wind noise protection I would have liked, but I got a good few seconds out of it anyway.
Tonight (Friday, May 22, 2009) MAW will be projecting at a party for the Mobile Music Symposium outside of the Nomad World Pub in Minneapolis from 9:00 PM to midnight. The artists include Jenny Schmid, Ali Momeni, David Steinman, Andrea Steudel, Rachel James, and Robin Schwartzman. I’ll be providing musical accompaniment using my gestural music sequencer, perhaps creating something similar to the following segment.
Translation: Yet Another GMS Micro Track. Many of these experiments are all starting to sound very similar. The reason why is that I’ve been doing all my testing with the same GMS preset file and the same set of virtual instruments in Ableton Live. 
I recently had the opportunity to gather some horse neighs, whinnies and snorts at an equestrian event. Apparently, when separating a horse from other horses it identifies as part of it’s herd, it will neigh or whinny more frequently. I was holding Tennessee while his friend Ginger was competing in a dressage competition. 
Plains cottonwood (Populus sargentii) grows near water, and tends to mimic water in several ways. Visually their leaves ripple in the wind like water rippling on a fairly still pond. The sound of the wind through their leaves also mimics water flowing in a stream. I recorded a gentle wind passing through a small grove of cottonwoods near a swamp full of cattails, birds, insects and amphibians. My wind sock for the PCM-D50 didn’t provide all the wind noise protection I would have liked, but I got a good few seconds out of it anyway.
Tonight (Friday, May 22, 2009) MAW will be projecting at a party for the Mobile Music Symposium outside of the Nomad World Pub in Minneapolis from 9:00 PM to midnight. The artists include Jenny Schmid, Ali Momeni, David Steinman, Andrea Steudel, Rachel James, and Robin Schwartzman. I’ll be providing musical accompaniment using my gestural music sequencer, perhaps creating something similar to the following segment.