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.
This is one of many GMS driven MKS-80 clips I recorded into my Live set during the Ostracon performance last night. We have video from several cameras and a multitrack recording of the event, so keep an eye out for a live show video soon.
While practicing for our performance today I took some time off to experiment a little bit with the MKS-80. To create this sound I held down a chord and turned up the LFO routing to the VCF. The LFO was set to the random waveform with the frequency set to a little bit more than fifty percent.
After a few hiccups we have finally finished producing our limited run of cassettes. We only have 25 instead of the 50 we had planned, but all the j-cards and labels are printed so we can produce more quickly if need be. Each cassette contains a unique download code for multi-platform listening. A big thanks goes out to Unearthed Music designer Benjamin Montag for his design work and assembly. Also, major thanks to Wes without whom it would have never happened. Finally, thanks to Chris for the inspiration. For now, to get a cassette you will have to show up to the release show tomorrow night. Later on we may consign a few at local stores, but this media is for local consumption only.
Unauthorized Modifications was written and produced by John Keston (that’s me) and Graham O’Brien. The album was recorded, engineered and mixed by Adam Krinsky and mastered by Tom Garneau. For the release show performance I have opted to christen my Super Jupiter Roland MKS-80 for it’s first live show since I have owned it. Here’s an example of what I have been getting out of it and the GMS during my practice sessions.
