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.
During my life as a musician, audio engineer and sound designer I have always been fascinated by the unique ways we construct believable sound environments. The concept of AudioCookbook.org is to pass on what we have learned as sound designers, foley artists, musicians and engineers by hosting “recipes for sound design”. This can include all sorts of things we do as audio professionals to create great sounding productions. From crazy foley techniques to step-by-step sound design tutorials.
Plenty of great sites offer terabytes of pre-recorded audio files. That’s not the purpose here. The goal is to share fun and useful techniques on how to create high quality, original sound effects. Perhaps this will lead people to reach for the microphone instead of browsing for needle drop. To help illustrate techniques, an integrated media plugin routes audio or video files directly into a player within posts. If you’re an audio professional and interested in sharing your techniques we please consider participating.
During my life as a musician, audio engineer and sound designer I have always been fascinated by the unique ways we construct believable sound environments. The concept of AudioCookbook.org is to pass on what we have learned as sound designers, foley artists, musicians and engineers by hosting “recipes for sound design”. This can include all sorts of things we do as audio professionals to create great sounding productions. From crazy foley techniques to step-by-step sound design tutorials.