Video: Parking Ramp Project

Posted on December 27, 2018 by John C.S. Keston

Aniccha Arts premieres a performance installation inside a seven-level parking garage. The project asks questions about transience, migration, and stability in a space that temporarily stores cars and is home to nothing. Performers pervade the parking structure with their bodies, working against the visible slant of the ramp to find their individual verticality. Questions we asked in creating the work: How do we find softness in a landscape of concrete? What anchors us on these alternating planes? How do we connect across such a complex landscape? video by: Cully Gallagher

This video by Cully Gallagher is 3 minutes and 30 seconds of fragments from the approximately 44 minute long Parking Ramp Project. Composing music for this performance installation showed me how far it is still possible to explore improvised music through experimental processes. Considering the acoustics of the parking ramp was a critical consideration within the musical scope. One approach to this was rests coded into the algorithms that allowed for the music to decay during long pauses while the ambient sound of the space inserted itself as an unintentional “performer”.

I am humbled by the willingness of the Pramila Vasudevan and other collaborators to humor my absurd scheme to compose the work using Javascript. This language allowed me to quickly produce animated, generative, graphic scores. It was also a privilege to perform the music with Peter Hennig (drums) and Cody McKinney (bass/electronics) who effortlessly interpreted the graphic scores. You can read and hear more about the project or continue for a gallery of screen grabs from the animated graphic scores. Continue reading →

Generative, Animated, Graphic Scores for Parking Ramp Project

Posted on September 12, 2018 by John C.S. Keston

This video is one of the six generative, animated, graphic scores that I have composed for Parking Ramp Project. The music was performed live and recorded while the screen was being captured. This piece is called Connected. Colored circles are generated on the screen with connecting lines. One of the three colors is randomly selected to change the color of circles with which it collides. Once all the circles are the same color they fade away and a new set is generated with a different color as the changer. This continues for seven minutes.

Musicians respond to this score by producing a sound event when circles of their assigned color collide with another circle or the boundaries of the screen. This process produces phrases with arbitrary yet continuous rhythmic patterns. The dimensions, velocity, x-axis, and y-axis of each circle serve as parameters that can be interpreted and applied to the frequency, timbre, dynamics and/or duration of the sound event. This interpretation is left up to the discretion of the musicians.

Purple = Peter Hennig (Drums)
Grey = Cody McKinney (Bass / Electronics)
Green / Cyan = John C.S. Keston (Rhodes / Synths)

Bloodline will be performing the music live for the piece, directed by Aniccha Arts choreographer Pramila Vasudevan, with nearly fifty dancers at a parking ramp near the Mall of America, September 29th and 30th, 2018. Learn more about Parking Ramp Project below: Continue reading →

VIDEO: John C.S. Keston at ISSTA

Posted on April 23, 2018 by John C.S. Keston

Last September 2017 I performed at the Irish Sound in Science Technology and the Arts Conference (ISSTA.ie) in Dundalk, Ireland (video by Daryl Feehely). The performance makes use of a custom Max patch controlled by an iPad, a Novation Circuit, a KeyStep, and a Minifooger Delay pedal. It occurred to me that it might be interesting to share the roots and evolution of this piece, so here goes. Continue reading →

In Habit: Living Patterns Complete Collection on SoundCloud

Posted on September 5, 2012 by John C.S. Keston

I have made the entire collection of pieces that I composed for “In Habit: Living Patterns,” performed at Northern Spark in June, 2012, available as a set of sixteen tracks on SoundCloud. This set will be downloadable for a unspecified time window, so get it while you can.

Duet from In Habit: Living Patterns

Posted on August 30, 2012 by John C.S. Keston

This is the fifteenth of sixteen pieces that I composed and performed during each vignette of the dance production “In Habit: Living Patterns,” performed at Northern Spark in June, 2012. This is also the last of two of the pieces in the series that I used a patch that I programmed to simulate a Japanese reed instrument called a shō.