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.
I was going to hold off on posting this piece until I had had a chance to produce it a little bit more. I did cheat and added a four-on-the-floor kick drum pattern to drive it along, but otherwise every loop was generated with “light controllers” using the GMS.
nice track John…i’m getting to know this tune really well. can’t wait to see what else comes out of the GMS. nice performance the other night as well.
Pretty melody. I would love to see a release of maybe some more refined GMS songs on Unearthed Music.
Hey John,
I’m really impressed with this.
Life has been hectic so far so I haven’t been on top with contributions, but I’m hoping to get more through soon.
Tom
@tom Cheers! Looking forward to your next entry!
@Kyle Me too! Cheers!
dunno what it is or how ure doin it. but it sounds good indeed..
@kev Thanks! Checkout the entries under the GMS tag for details about the sequencer.