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.
Jon Davis extracted this three minute segment from more than two hours of improvisation we recorded using my PCM D-50 at our last monthly performance at the Acadia Cafe in Minneapolis, September 25, 2012. On this occasion we had the pleasure of joining forces with multi-instrumentalist Douglas Ewart and percussionist Steve Goldstein. The original post is on dkomusic.tumblr.com.
It has been a couple of months since I have shared an Ostraka track (Wayland’s Smithy back in July), so I thought I would let you have an advance listen to a very recent mix featuring the DSI Tempest. This particular track also includes sounds programmed on the Roland MKS-80, SCI Pro-One, and Korg Monotribe. Thanks for listening, and let me know what you think.
This excerpt is from my first live performance featuring the DSI Tempest last Thursday, September 6, 2012 at the Walker Art Center for the NAMAC opening night reception. My setup consisted of the Tempest synched up with a Korg Monotribe. The notes and some of the drums patterns were created in real-time with the GMS creating those signature, angular lines. I also played percussion patterns into the Tempest sequencer during the performance. The entire 75 minute set was improvised. LEDs fed into the video camera were projected on the wall behind me and used to generated the melodic and some of the rhythmic content.
I have made the entire collection of pieces that I composed for “In Habit: Living Patterns,” performed at Northern Spark in June, 2012, available as a set of sixteen tracks on SoundCloud. This set will be downloadable for a unspecified time window, so get it while you can.
This is the fifteenth of sixteen pieces that I composed and performed during each vignette of the dance production “In Habit: Living Patterns,” performed at Northern Spark in June, 2012. This is also the last of two of the pieces in the series that I used a patch that I programmed to simulate a Japanese reed instrument called a shō.
