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.

Woody Synth Bass

Here’s a synth bass line with a nice woody tone, but a complete lack of accurate timing. Let’s call it atemporal.

Woody Bass Synth

Stop Motion Video: Leggy

I made this stop motion video using a tool developed in Max 5 by Ali Momeni. All the sounds effects and music were previously posted on ACB. The sound at the beginning is the wind up toy from Weird Noisey Spark Shooting Guy. The backyard ambiance is from Normalized Binaural Back Alley Ambiance. The cave sound is pitched down water dripping from Snow Melting into Lake Superior. Finally, the music at the end is from Processed Rhodes Pedal Noise.

ACB Reader Involvement Requested

unearthed-musicI have agreed to release my solo album with Unearthed Music on July 28, 2009. This will correspond with exactly one years worth of entries in the One Sound Every Day category on ACB. Since all of the pieces included in this work were inspired by my almost-daily-sound-experiments, it’s a fitting date to release the fruits of my labor. The album is nearly finished and will be released under my Ostraka moniker. Before I master the album I would like to involve ACB readers in the production process by polling you for suggestions.

What are your favorite sounds or micro-tracks that I’ve shared with you during this period? I plan on including four to six pieces from the ACB archives on the release. If you have an opinion about what should go on the album, please respond with a link to the post that has the sound in a comment to this entry. Thanks!

Here’s my latest mix of Blitzen Machine to give you a taste of what to expect from the album.

Blitzen Machine

Odd Percussion Sequence

I rendered this odd percussion sequence from a GMS practice session in Ableton Live.

Odd Percussion Sequence

GMS Performance Excerpt #2

xmaslightsHere’s another unedited excerpt from a recent performance using the GMS. This example contains two live looped layers in a similar range at 124 bpm.

As shown in the photo, I was using a string of patio lights as one of my “light controllers” to create the sequences.

GMS Performance Excerpt #2