living coast residency 2022
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Spooler interactives filmed at Benfield Valley, Coldean and Waterhall. App Development Neil Manuell. Best on a touch screen.
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Rachel was commissioned by Fabrica, ONCA and The Living Coast (Brighton and Lewes Downs UNESCO Biosphere) as they sought to understand, through the eyes of artists, how immersion in the natural world is good for physical and mental wellbeing. Rachel went looking for "shimmer*," natural phenomena that catch our eye and hold our attention, a shorthand for intangible ways biodiverse environments act on our physical and mental health. She walked with local land guardians who work with their communities to defend nearby wild, mapping what3words /// locations to these conversations.
*Since coining the term during the residency, Rachel read of the Yolngu term bir'yan, long-described by Australian Indigenous authorities. Bir'yan can be translated as ‘shimmer’ or 'brilliance,' and describes the way the eye is captured by the ‘rippling intra-activity’ of lively relationships honed over millennia. (Deborah Bird Rose, 'Shimmer,' Edinburgh University Press 2022) |
Full text and video works were published as an Insta takeover for Fabrica and shown on ONCA Barge.
Full text and video works were published as an Insta takeover for Fabrica and shown on ONCA Barge.
the quizzer
nudging reality
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"You're in this other world, this other realness. It throws you into another dimension."
"(It felt like) it was coming to life." "Very clever and unique design, good to experience something where you can still see the real world." |
"I found the woman [Rachael Henson] who created the cardboard AR hack revolutionary! I loved how she brought together basic old techniques with simple technology to created something super accessible, but super-extraordinary."
"It immerses you and it makes you almost invested in the story because not only are you viewing it in a real location, you are also controlling it (the action)..." |
An optical device attached to a smartphone which places a lifesized moving image in your dominant eye while you view the real world with the other. Used with headphones that merge soundscapes with live amplified sound, your brain combines the two views so that the action in the video appears to take place in the real world. The Quizzer was conceived during a Blast Theory Residency looking at sound, visuals and haptics as ways of conveying narrative and navigational cues. We prototyped it during the Reframed Project Development Programme at Lighthouse, and are currently in development at Fusebox.
MAKING GROUND
makers, moving image and physicality
Documenting ceramic artist Elaine Bolt and basket maker Annemarie O'Sullivan at a disused brickworks during their Making Ground collaboration, we developed work around the choreographies of making in place. We showed at Make Lewes Festival and with Making Ground at Fabrica. We explored analog and digital ways the audience can 'stir' an image sequence into life:
Pull! |
Crank! |
Move! |
SWIPE! (BEST VIEWED ON A TOUCH SCREEN)
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Flickerscopes in situ
hand-cranked augmented reality
I filmed documentary sequences of children and volunteers in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, and installed them as mutoscopes in situ during Shuffle Festival. 100 people interacted them per hour over the two days. Even director Danny Boyle had a go.
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Flickers
flick book navigated journeys
Site specific commissions where the audience explored an outdoor location on foot using a series of "street view" paper flick books, portraying fantasy affordances of public spaces. MORE
Commissioned by ANTI Festival, Finland, Brighton Festival, Up the Wall Festival, Chester, Greenwich and Docklands International Festival, Cairo Downtown Arts Festival (R&D), Undercurrent Weekend, Shoreham-by-Sea, National Trust Box Hill and White Night, Brighton.
Commissioned by ANTI Festival, Finland, Brighton Festival, Up the Wall Festival, Chester, Greenwich and Docklands International Festival, Cairo Downtown Arts Festival (R&D), Undercurrent Weekend, Shoreham-by-Sea, National Trust Box Hill and White Night, Brighton.
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"It's like a treasure hunt where the treasure is all around you and in your hand."
"You put me in a magical place somewhere between reality, your fiction and my imagination. I also loved the fact that I had to 'walk' to move and 'do' in order to discover the story ..." "..a massive hit with the public…" Art Monthly "Fanastically inventive and deeply charming." ANTI Contemporary Art Festival "I think you have created a unique kind of visual performance which is as much about the internal landscape of the viewer as the place they are in." Fabrica "Henson is part of an important group of artists creating new and inventive relationships between cinema and the urban space." White Night |
Click on the images to 'stir' the digital flick books:
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BOX HILL FLICKERS FILM
chalk grassland inhabitants
We were commissioned to make Box Hill Flickers into a short film by Discovering Places, National Trust and Natural England. It was shown on Livesites around the country during the 2012 Olympics.
