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the quizzer

The Quizzer was sparked by a discovery during our Blast Theory Residency during a GFA supported research period looking at sound, visuals and haptics as ways of conveying narrative and navigational cues. I  noticed that when you view lifesize moving-image in your dominant eye, while looking at the real world with the other, your brain combines the two views so that action in the video appears to take place in the real world. I prototyped this idea with Neil Manuell during the Reframed Project Development Programme at Lighthouse. ​ creating the Quizzer, a lens attached to a smartphone used with headphones that merge soundscapes with live amplified sound. 

​"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) to some extent..."

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"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." Emma Cat,  participant from XR Circus, an AHRC supported project.

Tester comments during Reframed at Lighthouse:
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"You're in this other world, this other realness. It throws you into another dimension." 

"I think that was really cool. You could do that for hours!"
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MAKING GROUND

I spent a year working alongside ceramic artist Elaine Bolt and basket maker Annemarie O'Sullivan at a disused brickworks near Horam in Sussex during their Making Ground collaboration, developing work around the choreographies of making. I explored analog and screen based ways the audience can control the action of a photo sequence showing the resulting work at Make Lewes Festival 2016 and as part of a Making Space residency at Fabrica. 

 Viewer animated touch screen sequences from Making Ground

Click on the images below then drag right to create the animation. Reverse the action by dragging left.

Looposcope

mutoscope

The walkerscope experiment  at Fabrica

As part of a Making Space residency at Fabrica, we made an interactive installation using a Kinect sensor so that walking towards and away from the screen made the film run forwards or backwards. People's interactions were extraordinarily playful as they examined and amplified small details of movement by repetition. 

Handcranked augmented reality  

As part of a Grants for the Arts research and development period I filmed documentary sequences of children and volunteers in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, and created mutoscope sequences that were installed 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

Site specific commissions where the audience explored an outdoor location on foot using a series of "street view" paper flick books. 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.

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."
​Co-Artistic Director, 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."
​Liz Whitehead, Fabrica

"Henson is part of an important group of artists creating new and inventive relationships between cinema and the urban space."
Donna Close, Director, White Night

BOX HILL FLICKERS FILM
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.