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.
Maybe “The Amazing Sound Art of Christine Sun Kim” is really amazing. Maybe. I don’t know, because what i listened in this video is messy and confused. I’m sorry, but your site is audiocookbook… location sound editing, aesthetic sound design and balanced-loudness-coherent sound mix are ingredients of every audio receipes above all of a video like this, where the silences and the sounds of cristina are the Art and what remain is only boundary.
Giuseppe
Italy
I agree that there is mess and confusion, but is “messy and confused” a bad thing in this case? Given the context that Christina outlines, about questioning the ownership of sound, perhaps the chaotic confusion in her work is part of what makes it relevant. On the other hand, the story here is incomplete even though it provided enough intrigue to prompt me into sharing it here.
To be honest, I felt this work uninspiring, and not creative enough to deserve the label ‘amazing’. I found neither the sound nor the art was pleasing in sum or product.
I did like the idea of tape over the speakers, but this was never elaborated on. I felt like it was just irreverent playing, rather than a focusing of creativity.
Anyway, I look forward to more things from audiocookbook. :)
I take full responsibility for the “amazing” label. I rarely post items other than my own work, but when I do it is something that inspires me. In this case it is the conceptual nature and intent of her ideas that are inspiring, rather than technical execution. Here’s more of her work in a setting that is less documentary and more documentation.
I don’t speak of “messy and confused” about Christine’s sound approach and the “confusion” in her work have nothing in common with the bad ear who had produced the video. I have read Amazing-Sound-Art and after video start I was disappointed. But this is only my opinion.
@Giuseppe Thanks for sharing your opinion! It’s great to see people commenting again. Comments have been few since the server crash. Now that all the ACB data is recovered I’m excited to be posting and hearing from people like you. Thanks again!