Friday November 14, 2025 | 7:30 pm | 15
D I F F U S I O N • F E S T I V A L • 9 • NIGHT FOUR The Voxel Theater
It’s High Zero’s DIFFUSION FESTIVAL, the festival of music made out of sounds. -AT THE VOXEL THEATER.
Just to remind you, DIFFUSION is our festival concerned with multi-channel electro-acoustic music, both brand new and historical.
Some of these sound pieces are made with just microphones, some of them are made with only electronic instruments, much of it is made with a combination of both. Some of them are played on 4 speakers, some on 6 speakers and some on 8 speakers!
Listening, in this medium is different from “normal” music, I like to think of it as the difference, on a hot day, between standing in front of an air conditioner, and swimming in a cool lake. Seats are taken, the lights are dimmed, and the sound commences, there is nothing to see, everything is seen with the ears.
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The 14th brings us two artists: RM Francis from Seattle and A.M. from The Birmingham Electro Acoustic Sound Theatre, both playing their own work. On the 15th A.M. will diffuse her selection of works representing a historical overview of multichannel electro acoustic music from the United Kingdom.
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A.M. is an electroacoustic composer, sound artist and performer working and living in Birmingham (UK). She studied with Jonty Harrison at master’s and doctoral level at the University of Birmingham, completing her PhD in 2008.
Her output encompasses electronic music composition from acousmatic music to free improvisation. As a collaborator, A.M. has worked extensively with dance and theatre, and on site-specific installations. With a strong interest in field recording, her work often explores the inherent sonic nature and identity of environmental sound, amplifying sonic characteristics that are not normally audible to the naked ear. Her music explores abstract and recognizable sound worlds and all the spaces in between. A.M. works extensively with multichannel audio both in fixed medium works and in live performance.
She was the recipient of a mention at the 35th Bourges international Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art Competition (France, 2008) and has received a number of notable commissions including those from Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Jazzlines, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Birmingham Hippodrome, and Rosie Kay Dance Company (for which she is the Company composer).
A.M. is Associate Professor in Music at the University of Birmingham and co-director of BEAST (Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre). She was a founding member and co-director of SOUNDkitchen, a Birmingham-based collective of curators, producers and performers of live electronic music and sound art. A.M. has been a member of a number of boards and panels and is currently a committee member for the British ElectroAcoustic Network (BEAN), and Chair of the British Section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM).
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RM Francis is an artist based in Seattle working with computer-generated sound and language via recording, installation, and performance. His practice foregrounds computation-based compositional strategies, focusing on methods that exploit discrepancies between human and artificial auditory systems. His current work exploits latent phonological data extracted from non-linguistic sound in order to generate the tonal, rhythmic, and semantic content of synthesized speech. The resulting asubjective narration articulates the potentialities of speech decoupled from embodied human expression, navigating between abstract sound and uncanny characterological specificity.
His oeuvre spans multimedia work incorporating sound, video, performance, and chocolate (Hyperplastic Other, 2017), investigations of historical computer synthesis methods (A Taxonomy of Guffaws, 2020), procedural text works for a chorus of synthetic voices (Every Single Person Has Some Muscle, 2022), and hallucinatory duets between dictation apps and deep learning networks (pedimos un mensaje, 2023). In addition to his solo projects, in recent years he has collaborated with Jack Callahan & Jeff Witscher, Jung An Tagen, and farmersmanual, among others.
These folks are presented at The Voxel – a beautifully refitted film theater on 25th Street. There will only be one show at the Voxel per night and you can pre-purchase tickets if you like at voxel.org
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PLEASE JOIN US FOR ALL FIVE NIGHTS! November 7th, 8th, 12th, 14th, 15th
