An evening of electronic music in it many forms: computation based composition strategies, hardware synthesis, and computer controlled mechanical noise.
R.M. Francis
RM Francis is an artist based in Seattle working with computer-generated sound and language via recording, installation, and performance. He has presented work at the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music (Oakland), Gray Area (San Francisco), Kolonia Artystów (Gdańsk), as well as clubs, auditoriums, warehouses, and galleries throughout North America. His practice foregrounds
computation-based compositional strategies, with a current emphasis on methods that exploit discrepancies between human and artificial auditory systems. His oeuvre spans multimedia work incorporating sound, video, performance, and chocolate (Hyperplastic Other, nada, 2017), investigations of historical computer synthesis methods (A Taxonomy of Guffaws, ETAT, 2020), procedural text works for a chorus of synthetic voices (Every Single Person Has Some Muscle, Flea, 2022), and hallucinatory duets between dictation apps and deep learning networks (pedimos un mensaje, Superpang, 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.
“RM Francis generates rivulets of ruptured, highly warped and pulverized tones that sound like a 21st-century Xenakis on meth.” — The Stranger
Maria Shesiuk
Maria Shesiuk is an experimental improviser from Baltimore. She uses vintage Casio keyboards manipulated through various effects for live experimental music improvisations. Recently she also started composing electronic music using Moog synthesizers, manipulated vocals, and field recordings. In addition, her musical journey included playing guitar, bass guitar, and jazz piano lessons. In the last two years her devotion to experimental music exploration has taken on a more central role.
Maria comes from a family of classically trained musicians. She started out on the same path by playing classical piano as a child in Ukraine in a musical school for the gifted. She also spent many evenings along side her father during rehearsals when he was the chief conductor of Kyrgyz National Opera, and Ballet theatre. At age 11 Maria moved to the U.S. with her family and circumstances shifted her focus to athletics, but music remained her biggest passion. In 2010 Maria moved to Baltimore from Detroit to complete graduate school in Physician Assistant studies. After graduating she jumped back into music. She discovered Baltimore’s Volunteers’ Collective and became a regular there. She always wanted to compose, but it took her many years to find her voice. The Volunteers’ Collective has helped her do just that.
Jeff Carey
Jeff Carey performs synthetic noise music with a physically controlled software based instrument of his own development called ctrlKey. He is an avid electro-instrumental improvisor and is a composer of multichannel acousmatic music. His music is abstract and sculptural, full of gesture, colored by noise bursts, percussive glitches and shifting resonance. His work often incorporates extramusical elements like strobe lights, lasers and computer animation all under the constructive control of his electro-instrument to explore the space between visceral and the external embodiment of sound. He builds physically controllable custom software synthesis instruments and is interested in exploring immediate and flexible sound production with virtuosity in electronic music.
