October 5, 2023
8:00pm doors / 8:30pm show
Tickets: $15 (discounted or free for members)
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Mesh Manifold is a live sound-sculpture composition by the duo MSHR, consisting of a multitude of devices in a complex and unruly feedback system of sound and light. Developed over the course of a summer residency in Santa Cruz, California, Mesh Manifold extends MSHR’s past work, introducing a fresh population of autonomous sculptural “entities,” cohabiting across simulated and substantial substrates.

The resonating bodies contain custom-built electrical circuits with sensors and amplifiers that emit and respond to signals rippling throughout the system. The entities converse through these physical connections as well as engaging with an invisible software canopy inscribed across the terrain through various programming languages. As elements of the system themselves, MSHR move throughout the sculptural array, adjusting the waveform micro-climates while modulating their own decisions in response to the unpredictable audiovisual results of their active presence. The entities and agents together form a babbling biome for electrical current, cultivating a life-like chorus from inert components.

Mesh Manifold was commissioned by Indexical and The Lab, with in-kind support from the Arts Council of Santa Cruz County and Idea Fab Labs, Santa Cruz.

This performance is part of the Recombinant Media Labs: Crisis Data Transfer, presented from Oct 5 - 7 at Gray Area, The Lab, and Counterpulse.

MSHR is an art collective that builds and explores sculptural electronic systems. Their practice is a self-transforming entity with its outputs patched into its inputs, expressing its form through interactive installations, virtual environments and live improvisations. MSHR was established in 2011 in Portland, Oregon by Brenna Murphy and Birch Cooper. Their name is a modular acronym, designed to hold varied ideas over time.