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.
Hey. This Sounds really cool. I have been interested in Grain Synthesis and processing for a while and I would really like to get this Sftware. Do you have it available for Download anywhere? I would really appreciate. Many thanks and keep up with the great job!!!
Thanks for the interest, Erik. I will probably put it out at some point, but I’m not ready to distribute it yet. If I get more pressure from ACB readers I might cave and put it on Google Code, so stay tuned.
Hello John,
I’m also very interested in your software. It would be fantastic if you were willing to share it with us. I could also understand if you prefer not to, since you have put a lots of thoughts and work in it.
All the best.
Gunter
Hi Gunter. Thanks for your note. I probably will share the Grain Machine at some point, but would like to run it through it’s paces a few times before releasing it.
Hey Just a quick question about your scrub, are you able to control the ableton live time line with that in session mode? i do alot of post production and that’s one thing i really miss,id love to be able to hook up a control surface to scrub through the timeline for video editing
@Jeramiah Actually, no. It only scrubs samples that are loaded into the M4L instrument. I’m not sure how you can scrub the main timeline using a controller, but I’m sure where there’s a will there’s a way.
This device sound very intresting, I really like your stepsequencer (using it all the time)! any news on when you’re goning to release this one?
I’ve got a lot of cleanup to do before releasing Grain Machine. When I do, I’ll post an article here on ACB. Thanks!
Im in the process of adding a granular component to my monome buffer playback patch, having troubles getting a good granular object to work with m4l. Which object do you use with this patch? Looks very nifty…
@lokey Thanks for the note. For the x/y stuff I used grooveduck~ and for the wheel I used play~ and modeled the friction with JavaScript.
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Very interested in Grain machine. Please let me know if you release it. Thanks for your work.
Hi Jason. I will most likely release it before I speak at the Eyeo Festival (http://eyeofestival.com) toward the end of June.
…looking forward to it, thanks in advance.
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Hi John! I’m wondering if you ever released this device? I’m very interested trying it out – it looks fantastic. I live in Minneapolis and was actually at the eyeo festival back in 2010. I haven’t looked to see if they are doing this again, but I found it a completely inspiring conference.
Thanks,
Isaac
Hi Isaac. #Eyeo is happening again this year starting next week! There are no tickets left, but I do have a performance during Northern Spark that is open to the public. Here are the details:
http://2012.northernspark.org/project/aniccha-arts
As for as Grain Machine goes. I would love to release it, but I haven’t had time to make it street ready. I’ll post something on the blog once I make it available. Cheers!
Thanks for the information! I hope I can make it. Now that you said Eyeo is sold out, I remember that they went pretty quickly, months ahead of time when we attended, which I think was last year, not 2010. I should have looked earlier. Oh well, maybe next year. Thanks again and maybe I’ll see you at the Northern Spark event.
Isaac