For this audiovisual performance, MSHR designed a digital system that links visual and sonic parameters using open-source software. The duo improvises with the system through a handcrafted sculptural interface—a tool that arranges signals into compositions of video projection and four-channel sound. The result is a form of live cinema in which visual and sonic shapes continuously evolve through the mutual interaction of the performers.
MSHR is an artist collective that collaboratively creates and explores sculptural electronic systems. Their performances and installations integrate electronic signals and human presence, forming a dense, interwoven network of causalities that shape a living, pulsating audiovisual environment. They investigate the intuitive and technical transitions between sonic and sculptural forms through the use of analog circuits and open-source software, generating mutually resonating hyperobjects. MSHR was founded by Brenna Murphy and Birch Cooper in 2011 in Portland, Oregon.
Network Entity is a one-day event within the long-term project Small, Absolutely Silent Changes.
The project Small, Absolutely Silent Changes is conceived as a speculative exploration of the institution and space of the library as a model of the world, reflecting its current cultural, communicative, and power dynamics. Through commentary and interventions within this model, we seek to understand its nature and consider its transformations. Our tools include not only the extensive book collection and its history, but also scanners, barcode readers, and other technologies essential to the library’s operation — as well as the plants in flower boxes that shape its interior, and even the silverfish that live here discreetly alongside the staff and readers. The project takes place at the Moravian Library — the second largest in the Czech Republic — and unfolds as an exhibition, a series of interventions, performances, and discussions, which extend into the foyer, stair landings, courtyard, and reading rooms.
The collective Café Utopia — composed of Marika Kupková, Katarína Magid Hládeková, and Markéta Žáčková — works across disciplines and generations, connecting the Moravian Library team with artists, students, and faculty from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno University of Technology (FaVU BUT). By engaging with the accessible environment of the library, the collective brings contemporary art closer to a diverse public, while also creating opportunities to critically reflect on the future of institutions that manage, mediate, and co-create collective memory. The aim of this interdisciplinary collaboration is not to establish definitive theses, but rather to open a living space for questions and dilemmas related to shared learning and knowledge, and their role in the twenty-first century.