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.
Midnight Playground is an interactive, kinetic, installation by Peng Wu, Jack Pavlik, John Keston, and Analaura Juarez. Peng initiated and directed the idea, Jack built the jump rope robot, and Annalaura helped refine the concept and promote the piece. My role was to produce the music and track it to the still images that Peng had selected. I ended up making a one hour video with thirty minutes of the image from the moon followed by a four second transition into another thirty minutes with an image of Mars. To produce the sound I gave Peng a list of audio excerpts that had all been previously posted on AudioCookbook in One Synthesizer Sound Every Day. He picked the two that he thought would work the best and I went back to my original recordings and processed them specifically for the piece by adding some reverb and delay to enhance the spacial properties of the music. The piece will be on display in Gallery 148 at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design through January 29, 2012.
Tonight (Friday, January 6, 2012) DKO is performing our first concert of the year. We’ll play two sets at Acadia, 329 Cedar Ave S., Minneapolis, MN 55454. This little gem of a venue has one of the best beer selections in the city. There’s no cover and all ages are welcome. Here’s another segment from our December 16, 2011 performance at the Kitty Cat Klub. This one starts out with some Pro-One arpeggios then moves into Rhodes playing with a solo at 4:43 and then a Pro-One solo at about 9:25.
This improvised piece from my trio DKO was recorded live at the Kitty Cat Klub on December 16, 2011 (live mix by Ryan Olcott and post mix by John Keston) and features Jon Davis on bass, John Keston on keyboards (that’s me), and Graham O’Brien on drums. For more music, information about DKO, and booking please visit dkomusic.tumblr.com. My rig on this track included two of my favorite standbys; the Rhodes electric piano and my newly calibrated Pro-One. I also had my Electro-Harmonix Memory Man Delay on a send and used the Korg Monotron for some atonal synthesizer textures.
I recently came across this lead produced on the MKS-80 with the GMS during a performance last August. Throughout the recording you can hear the LFO speed changing along with my usual real-time filter adjustments made with the Bitstream 3X.
