​OUTSHIFT is led by len-based artist Rachel Henson. She has been commissioned by natural and heritage organisations, National Trust and Natural England and festivals in the UK and abroad. Residencies include The Living Coast Biosphere, Blast Theory and Lighthouse.

Rachel's lens-based practice began when I noticed changes in attention state while solo walking from my door. I began making journeys navigated by paper flick-books as a response to the way we read the world by moving in relation to it. Running with the idea of looking as dynamic and relational, a mutually altering process, I co-designed digital versions of this interaction. Currently I’m working with the fluid way our visual systems decide what to attend to, often prioritising movement and light, as a way of seeing the animacy of things on their own terms.

​Drawing on walking my home range, the area an hour's walk from our door, we reinvent paper and digital moving-image viewing mechanisms to foster a connective attention to land. The work is specific to place, interactive, and often shown in situ. 

​Work includes:
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A lo-fi Augmented Reality device which reveals what’s in front of us rather than inserting artificial artefacts into our surroundings. The device uses binocular rivalry, the fluid way our visual systems decide what is worthy of attention. By honing awareness of micro/macro movements of light, wind and life in our field of vision as evidence of life systems in action, we get a feel for the ecological reality of a site.

Sets of paper flick books used to navigate an outdoor site and reveal a visual story. 

 ‘Spoolers,’  an interactive app, allowing viewers an intuitive connection to filmed phrases of movement-in-nature.