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.
Listening on monitors or good quality phones will allow you to hear the deep tone created when I smacked my palm against the side of the rigid front fork from my Surly 1×1 single speed mountain bike. I captured this sound with my PCM-D50 using the built in mics. This was a quiet sound so I needed to record in a quiet space.
The tone sounds 26″ but in the picture it looks like it could be a 29″ fork. : ) You know tuned down that might make a cool 808 kind of drum sound.
Nice one, Jeff. It is a 26″ fork. And the pitch created is a G flat. It very well could make a good 808. I may just give that a go.
Thats funny, I’m repainting an old Schwinn right now, and I accidentally wanged the fork and really liked the sound…then I saw this post. I have a bunch of forks, maybe I’ll setup a fork orchestra.
Fork orchestra. That an interesting idea.
You’ve all probably seen this but here’s a guy that has recreated the nutcracker suite on bike parts. Interesting, quirky sound.
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/11/28/nutcracker-suite-played-exclusively-on-bicycle-parts/
He scored a spot for Specialized bikes.