Spark Festival 2009 Documentation

Posted on December 16, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

A website was recently launched by Andrea Streudel and Ali Momeni containing vast amounts of video and audio documentation for the 2009 Spark Festival. I’m going to be spending some time reliving some of my experiences there from last February. This is an incredible archive of materials from the festival. Something from virtually every performance, installation, keynote, and concert is available. To get an idea of the festival and the scope of the documentation I suggest watching the Spark Festival 2009 Overview.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest watching the footage of my group Keston and Westdal with Graham O’Brien at the Bedlam Theater during one of the nightlife events (complete with crazy dancers). More documentation of Keston and Westdal’s performance is available including more video and a complete audio recording of the show.

Visit the site to download footage or audio of practically everything that happened at the festival.

Introducing the Fluid Piano

Posted on December 10, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

My mate Joshua Herbst recently shared this video with me of the first ever “fluid” piano invented by Geoff Smith.

The completely acoustic piano allows the musician to tune every string by a whole tone either during the performance or before hand in order to set up particular microtonal scales.

The fluid piano sounds beautiful, reminiscent of sitar, but with a deeper tone quality. I can’t wait to hear more from this ingenious instrument.

Here’s the original article from the Guardian:
Introducing the ‘fluid piano’

A Glorious Dawn

Posted on September 28, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

This has clearly been making the rounds, so it’s likely that you’ve already had the pleasure, but I can’t resist linking it to it here.

The piece features video and auto-tuned dialog of Carl Sagan from his amazing series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, mashed-up into a melancholy, downtempo, new-age, retro music video with just enough (or perhaps not enough) tongue in cheek. Finally, auto-tune use to be proud of!

The piece was produced by John Boswell. More about him and his music is available on his site. He has also made a download of the track and the video available here.

MAW Media Mash-up at the WBSC

Posted on September 25, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

Earlier this month I shared an excerpt of music from a performance at a recent Minneapolis Art on Wheels exhibition. MAW artist, Andrea Steudel, did some excellent video documentation that highlights the artwork and sound that transpired at the event.

The audio quality is quite good, considering the conditions in the space, and goes a long way to illustrate the ambiance during the night. Please enjoy the video and checkout the original post at http://minneapolisartonwheels.org/content/media-mash-wbsc.