About John CS Keston
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.
Subconsciously fulfilling the ACB metaphor, I recorded these sounds as I was preparing a spaghetti dinner in my kitchen tonight. I used my Audio Technica AT822 stereo condenser running straight into the MacBook Pro line in port. To my surprise I managed to get levels, but had to turn up the input volume in the preferences almost all the way up to get a good strong signal. In the preferences you can adjust the input volume, so the signal is running through some sort of pre-amplification.
I have both an AT-822 and a MacBook Pro (15″ 2.2ghz). I haven’t used the AT-822 as much as I’d like to yet though – planning on mainly using it w/ my Sony Minidisc Hi-MD RH1.
You said you wouldn’t recommend this set up this way without running the mic through a pre-amp – what kind of pre-amp would you suggest?
Hey, Shahryar. I don’t have a good recommendation for a pre-amp for the AT822. I’ve actually used an old Sony PCM-M1 DAT recorder that eats tapes as a pre-amp for mine. It works really well, but there’s not much on the market for small portable and inexpensive mic pre-amps. You might consider building something from a kit. Let me know what you discover. Cheers!