Courtesy of Interstitial
Every time I start to describe MSHR to the uninitiated, I think of the cliché about trying to describe a psychedelic experience to someone who’s never had one.
“They make these multidimensional installations and play instruments they design and build themselves. What do they sound like? Hmm. Have you tried DMT?”
MSHR—pronounced “mesher”—is the duo of Portland-based artists Brenna Murphy and Birch Cooper. The project was formed in 2011 during both artists’ involvement in another experimental art collective, Oregon Painting Society. My first encounter with OPS was at Seattle University’s Hedreen Gallery in 2010, where they had created an immersive environment of eerie objects, motion-activated lights, and an array of hand-built instruments, including synthesizers that used the bodies of living plants as conductors for sound that could be modulated by gently touching a leaf or stem.