Video of Voice Lessons Touch Screen Installation

Posted on November 14, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Voice Lessons is an electronic, audio device that interrogates the popular myth that every musical instrument imitates the human voice. Touching the screen allows the participant to manipulate the visuals and vocalizations of the “voice teacher” as he recites vocal warm up exercises.

The piece resides in the space between a musical instrument and voice lesson. Move the touch point left, right, up, and down to explore the visual and auditory possibilities. Rapid high pitched loops occur while touching near the top of the screen while lower pitched longer loops are heard near the bottom.

The actor, also named John Keston, is my retired father who became a voice teacher after a long career on stage in plays, operas, and musicals with the Royal Shakespeare Company in our native country England and abroad.

Voice Lessons
32” interactive touch screen installation
By John Keston 2011
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All Content Recovered (Unless Not)

Posted on November 13, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

After more than two months of spare time spent searching and replacing, all of the audio and image files that were lost in the crash have been recovered. It is possible that a few things have fallen through the cracks. I have been clicking “Visit Random Entry” to do occasional spot checks since wrapping up my data recovery todo list, and a couple of things have come up missing that way.

It has been interesting to revisit the old content, but I am ready to move on and get back to posting some of my latest projects. If you’d like to help out the recovery process, click the “Visit Random Entry” link in the right sidebar a few times, and if you find something that doesn’t play, or a missing image or video, please post a comment with a link to the post in question. Thanks!

Sound Sample from Voice Lessons

Posted on November 11, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Voice Lessons is an interactive touch-screen installation that I recently presented during a graduate critique seminar at MCAD. The piece, developed in Max/MSP, granulates both sound and video as the viewer touches the screen while maintaining synchronization. I will be installing the piece again next month for an open studio night on December 9, 2011 at the MCAD Whittier Studios, 2835 Harriet Avenue South, Minneapolis. I will also be sharing more complete documentation about the piece soon. For now, please enjoy this short segment of audio sampled from the piece as it was in use.

Voice Lessons Excerpt

In/Out Festival of Digital Performance 2011

Posted on October 29, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

For those of you in or near New York City, the In/Out Festival of Digital Petformance has another great lineup this year as you can see from the attached flier. Checkout their site (inoutfest.org) for the details.

Forgotten Channels

Posted on October 1, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Forgotten Channels is a generative music and projected video performance piece that aims to discover connections between our visual memory and our response to peculiar soundscapes.

The visuals for the piece are made up of fifteen shots selected from hundreds of mobile phone videos. The videos make up a score that was prepared by playing them on a large LCD display then re-shooting them with another mobile device to frame mysterious elements and expose the imperfections within the digital media.

To perform the piece the visual score is abstracted again by playing it on yet another mobile device positioned below a camera plugged into a computer. Custom software analyses the input to produce a real-time stream of algorithmic music. The musical information is captured and manipulated by the performer in response to the imagery.