Synesthesia: A Sea of Bliss with Don Slepian & Ken Jenkins

Born into a scientific family, music technologist Don Slepian showed both musical and technical talent early in life. He was a tester on the early internet as a member of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Synthesizer Soloist with the Honolulu Symphony and Musical Director of the Honolulu Theater For Youth. He has been presented by WNYC’s “New Sounds” in New York’s Lincoln Center and performed at the Pompidou Center in Paris. He is currently living in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania where he writes and builds instruments.

“… one of the genre’s major talents…”

— Rolling Stone Magazine

“One of the world’s finest electronic artists.”

WFMU, “Synthetic Pleasure,”

East Orange, NJ USA

“His music is already at the level of sonic and musical integration which few achieve — simultaneously stimulating and effervescent and soothing and profound.”

— “Hearts of Space” Music Guide

“Slepian offered a dazzling smorgasbord of computer sonorities ─ all of them fascinating, some of them achingly beautiful. He is undisputedly a master of his medium.”

The Newark Star Ledger

Even before graduating from Carnegie Mellon in electrical engineering, Ken’s soul had been psychedelicized by the music and the mind expanding culture of the late 60’s. He began creating dynamic colorful visuals to accompany the music that helped fuel his transformation.

Returning to the SF Bay Area in the summer of ’69, he got a day job in Silicon Valley where he grew up, but his passion had become light and sound, and his visual art form was initially lumia* projections which painted the walls and screens with rich ever-changing color and softly flowing abstract forms, later to be called “visual music”.

Ken's electronics education served him well, as video became the best medium for him to capture, layer, and record his art, and VHS tapes, Laserdiscs, and eventually DVDs became distribution media.

He contributed his images to a long list of films and videos in what had morphed into the New Age culture, with its music which included ambient, which best suited Ken’s meditative visuals.

In 1989, he released the first of his ongoing Illumination video series.

Live performances have from the beginning played a major part of Ken's artistic expression.

(A Quail Boys Production)

Host or Publisher The Berkeley Alembic Foundation