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.

MSHR improvises with cybernetic systems through a sequence of gestural interfaces. The systems are based on feedback between light and sound and the physical interaction of the players with their hand made instruments. The physical design of the live interfaces comes out of MSHR’s sculptural practice, weaving intuitive and procedural approaches in digital sculpting software to manifest the sculptural objects that become their console. In performing the composition, MSHR act as agents within a synthetic ecosystem.