ISSTA Live Recording, September 2017

Posted on October 27, 2017 by John C.S. Keston

This recording was made during my appearance at the International Sound in Science Technology and the Arts (ISSTA) Conference in Ireland on September 8, 2017. The piece is a rendition of my composition, Vocalise Sintetica, first performed at Echofluxx14 in Prague. This piece is written so that it is allowed to evolve in a number of ways each time it is performed. Here’s how it changed this time around.

First of all it uses the Audiovisual Grain Machine (AVGM), which I update frequently. This time the updates were minor improvements to speed and efficiency. However, I did add some new audiovisual content. Secondly, in order to travel lightly, I limited the AVGM accompaniment to a single Novation Circuit. I loaded the Circuit with custom patches and samples, and used my Minifooger Delay on the AVGM (I usually leave it dry), but that was it, sonically. Other than that the Arturia KeyStep helped add a few tricks (mainly arps and one drone) to the mix.

Upcoming Concert at ISSTA September 8, 2017

Posted on August 31, 2017 by John C.S. Keston

I’m pleased to announce that I will be performing a version of my piece Vocalise Sintetica at the ISSTA Festival and Conference on Sound. The conference will be held on September 7th and 8th, 2017 at the Dundalk Institute of Technology in Dundalk, Ireland. Please check the website for details.

I have developed new content and features for the AVGM (Audiovisual Grain Machine) which I’ll be using during the performance. I also be triggering samples and playing patches with a hardware synthesizer to accompany the audiovisual content. Here’s a video that demonstrates some of the new media:

A post shared by John Keston (@jkeston) on Aug 23, 2017 at 1:46pm PDT

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AVGM: Rheology

Posted on August 25, 2014 by John C.S. Keston

Here’s another movement from my composition Vocalise Sintetica that I performed at Echofluxx in Prague and later during Northern Spark 2014. I named the movement Rheology after the study of the flow of matter in the liquid state. The audiovisual content was created with a Max patch I developed called AVGM (AV Grain Machine). The instruments that I used to create the accompaniment include: DSI Tempest, Bass Station II, Korg Volca Keys, and Memory Man Delay.

Vocalise Sintetica at Echofluxx 14, Prague

Posted on June 30, 2014 by John C.S. Keston

On May 7, 2014 I performed Vocalise Sintetica at the Echofluxx Festival in Prague. The piece is made up of four movements: I. Machines (00:00), II. Liquid (18:43), III. Vocalise (28:55), and, IV. Sintetica (38:41). Each movement is a playlist of five audiovisual objects that are instantly available to be projected and amplified while being granulated in real-time by a performer using a multitouch interface. The performer may loop their gestures applied to the audiovisual objects in order to bring in additional synthesized sound layers that contrast or mimic the audiovisual objects. My performance at Echofluxx was made possible by a grant from the American Composers Forum with funds provided by the Jerome Foundation.
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Audiovisual Granular Synthesis of Water Objects

Posted on June 19, 2014 by John C.S. Keston

This is a screen capture from a Max project I developed that does interactive, synchronized, granular synthesis of corresponding sound and video that’s tentatively titled AVGM for Audiovisual Grain Machine. I have used the software during aperformance at the Echofluxx festival in Prague and at the Katherine E. Nash gallery for the opening of The Audible Edge exhibition during Northern Spark 2014.