MSHR is the art collective of Brenna Murphy and Birch Cooper, established in 2011 in Portland, Oregon. We collaboratively build and explore sculptural electronic systems that take form as audiovisual compositions, performances and installations. Our performances revolve around analog synthesizers and computer music systems played in feedback with lights and movement.
Our installations involve generative and interactive electronic systems embedded in immersive sculptural arrays. We explore intuitive and technical gradients between sonic and sculptural forms, using analog circuitry and open-source software to sculpt mutually resonant hyperobjects.
We conceive of our practice in terms of cybernetics- as a system with many inputs and outputs that are patched back into each other. The emergent form serves as an ever-morphing navigational guide. Constructing and exploring our own synthetic systems is a way of tracing the interwoven biological, ecological and technological structures that frame our experience as embodied humans today.
The name MSHR is a modular acronym designed to hold varied ideas over time.
During Visions of the Future Festival 2015 Portland, OR-based MSHR duo Brenna Murphy and Birch Cooper produced unusual installations and live performances that revolved around a unique system of light-audio feedback, employing handmade synthesizers, sculptural interfaces, and ritualistic performances. Their work placed the human body into a dynamic relationship with sound and light as they explored the hyperscapes of a transhumanist ceremony.
