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.
Last Friday, November 7th, to mark my one hundredth sound posted in the One Sound Every Day category, I sequenced forty two equally sized micro samples extracted from sounds I had posted here on AudioCookbook.org. Due to a trip scheduled out of the country, I ran out of time and did not compile all of the available ninety nine sounds into the piece. As promised in the original post, I have now managed to complete the chronologically sequenced compilation of micro samples into eight seconds of chaotic noise. I extended the one hundredth sample of Caribbean surf as an ending to the staccato sequence.
Slashdot.org has an article about a site that is hosting the sounds of thirty five different hard drives failing. Although the recording quality is generally poor there are some really interesting sounds including a Maxtor drive with a stuck spindle producing a “futuristic cell phone melody”. You can read the article and checkout the sounds here, although it might be a bit busy due to the site being slashdotted.
Also, click the image to see a video of a remix of Nude by Radiohead made entirely out of sounds captured from old computer peripherals including a dot matrix printer, scanner, cassette drive, hard drives, and so on. The remix and video was created by Glasgow based artist James Houston.
I recently recorded the sound of Caribbean surf and the gurgling of the waves as they receded from tide pools on a beach near Playa del Carmen in Quintana Roo, Mexico. I did my best to shield the wind from the mic, but the cheap foam wind screen I brought with me was painfully inadequate.
To try and repair the sound I edited a few instances of clipping, and ran the lot through a a high pass filter to reduce some of the wind noise. Finally I compressed the audio to bring out some of the gurgling and splashy sounds.
This sound is the seventh entry in my series of FM synthesis experiments. There are some very strange high frequency overtones audible in the first half of the sound. If you can bear the high frequencies, I suggest looping this sound and then listening to it for about thirty minutes.
As you listen say to yourself, “I will stop smoking cigarettes. I will stop smoking cigarettes.” If you are a non-smoker afterward and were not a non-smoker before, let me know and we’ll start a business.
Number six in my series of FM synthesis experiments is a grainy, low frequency stomach growl that makes me imagine subterranean seismic activity. For this example I played a randomized patch three times at different positions on the keyboard while exploring the patch.
One word of warning: I have not filtered out any subsonic frequencies or tested the audio on equipment that is capable of producing them.
Last Friday, November 7th, to mark my one hundredth sound posted in the One Sound Every Day category, I sequenced forty two equally sized micro samples extracted from sounds I had posted here on AudioCookbook.org. Due to a trip scheduled out of the country, I ran out of time and did not compile all of the available ninety nine sounds into the piece. As promised in the original post, I have now managed to complete the chronologically sequenced compilation of micro samples into eight seconds of chaotic noise. I extended the one hundredth sample of Caribbean surf as an ending to the staccato sequence.
I recently recorded the sound of Caribbean surf and the gurgling of the waves as they receded from tide pools on a beach near Playa del Carmen in Quintana Roo, Mexico. I did my best to shield the wind from the mic, but the cheap foam wind screen I brought with me was painfully inadequate. 
This sound is the seventh entry in my series of FM synthesis experiments. There are some very strange high frequency overtones audible in the first half of the sound. If you can bear the high frequencies, I suggest looping this sound and then listening to it for about thirty minutes. 
Number six in my series of FM synthesis experiments is a grainy, low frequency stomach growl that makes me imagine subterranean seismic activity. For this example I played a randomized patch three times at different positions on the keyboard while exploring the patch.