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.
I made this recording during a five minute walk to one of the several subway stations in the Battery Park City community of lower Manhattan, New York. On this particular Saturday afternoon traffic was light. There was a great deal of construction going on in the area, but most of it was on hold for the weekend. I think it’s a nice example of quiet, weekend afternoon, city ambiance. The recording is quite long, and although I did plan on editing it down to a shorter segment, after listening to it a few times I decided to leave it as it is, including the part in the middle where a car went by blaring early Herbie Hancock.
One Sound Every Day entries are likely to be a little scarce until Monday or Tuesday because I’ll be in New York for a performance at Nublu. The group playing is Keston and Westdal with Graham O’Brien on drums. We’ve been busy preparing for this and other events lately, including the Spark Festival in Minneapolis. I’m excited to be visiting New York again. This will be our fifth performance there as Keston and Westdal, and the third time at Nublu, which is a really great venue. I’m also eagerly anticipating the Spark Festival having just learned that Pole will be performing on February 21, 2009.
That said, while I’m in New York I’m planning on making some binaural recordings of environments, street musicians, musical performances, and general mayhem as I encounter it, so I expect to catch upsoon after I return. New York readers and visitors, please stop by Nublu (between 4th and 5th on Avenue C) this Saturday, February 7. We’ll be playing two sets starting at midnight. Here’s an example of what you might hear during our show.
I stumbled across this backwards dissonant Rhodes chord while going through the recorded sounds in an Ableton Live project from about two and a half years ago.
This loop of Rhodes electric piano is the basis for the track Panopticon on One Day to Save All Life (Unearthed Music, 2008). I played the Rhodes through my Memory Man delay to get a sort of watery quality then captured the recording and looped it for the piece. Here’s one instance of the loop.
Here’s a short loop from one of our live sets. This clip is used in the piece Some Kind of Adhesive from One Day to Save All Life (Unearthed Music, 2008). I applied a little bit of knob turning on a few sends while laying down this segment, which is typical of how I use this clip during performances.
I made this recording during a five minute walk to one of the several subway stations in the Battery Park City community of lower Manhattan, New York. On this particular Saturday afternoon traffic was light. There was a great deal of construction going on in the area, but most of it was on hold for the weekend. I think it’s a nice example of quiet, weekend afternoon, city ambiance. The recording is quite long, and although I did plan on editing it down to a shorter segment, after listening to it a few times I decided to leave it as it is, including the part in the middle where a car went by blaring early Herbie Hancock.
Here’s a short loop from one of our live sets. This clip is used in the piece Some Kind of Adhesive from