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.
The Most Beautiful Sound in the World Competition is underway thanks to efforts from SoundCloud and BeautifulNow. Here’s what BeautifulNow representative, Rachel Whaley, had to say to ACB about the competition:
BeautifulNow, a new site focused on the most beautiful things happening in the world right now, is running a competition, in partnership with SoundCloud and The Sound Agency, to find THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SOUND IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW. It’s really cool! And we thought that you and your community would be really interested because you seem to be all about beautiful sound.
The competition is open for entries until 12/16, so there’s still time to enter. Here’s a link to the competition so you can check it out: beautifulnow.is/sound.
There’s a great prize package. We have awesome judges who will select finalists. And our community votes. How cool would it be if your sound could win The Most Beautiful Sound in the World? What do you think?
Check out our site, our Facebook page, and follow us on Twitter for more info and let us know what you think!
This is the fifth excerpt from my Ostraka performance, “Postfauxpocalyse,” on October 24, 2013 at Popup Northrop. It was recorded directly from a Mackie 1202 VLZ Pro to a Sony PCM-D50 at 48kHz/24bit. Again the instruments used were a DSI Tempest, Korg Volca Keys, Korg Monotribe, and Memory Man analog delay. This is my favorite of the series so far because, although improvised, it feels the most compositional.
This is the forth excerpt from my live performance, “Postfauxpocalyse,” on October 24, 2013 at Popup Northrop. I recorded it directly from a Mackie 1202 VLZ Pro to a Sony PCM-D50 at 48kHz/24bit. Again the instruments used were a DSI Tempest, Korg Volca Keys, Korg Monotribe, and Memory Man analog delay.
This is the third excerpt from my live performance, “Postfauxpocalyse,” on October 24, 2013 at Popup Northrop was recorded directly from a Mackie 1202 VLZ Pro to a Sony PCM-D50 at 48kHz/24bit. Once again the instruments used were a DSI Tempest, Korg Volca Keys, Korg Monotribe, and Memory Man analog delay.
This 1:19 minute excerpt from my live performance, “Postfauxpocalyse,” on October 24, 2013 at Popup Northrop was recorded directly from a Mackie 1202 VLZ Pro to a Sony PCM-D50 at 48kHz/24bit. The only instruments used were a DSI Tempest, Korg Volca Keys, and Korg Monotribe. I also used a Memory Man analog delay during the performance.
“Postfauxpocaplypse brings together MAW members Jenny Schmid, Davey T. Steinman and Eben Kowler with musician John Keston for a night projection event that employs live drawing, animation, wireless camera feed, roaming interactive performance and responsive soundscapes. This piece responds to our current post-fake-apocalyptic state of illusion by embracing morbid seasonal imagery to respond to non-functioning governments, surveillance and a culture of excess.”
