the quizzer
Nudging reality
The Quizzer was conceived during our Blast Theory Residency 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.
As a Fusebox resident I was invited to demo the Quizzer at TOMtech’s intensive four day VRlab, part of Brighton Digital Festival. Showing to a high volume of people gave me the opportunity to gather user data.
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Excited. I have never experienced anything like it.
Engaged. Fascinated. The swimmer made a wonderful effect, especially with the rewind and fast-forward controls. Experimental – testing out the way my eyes worked together. Ethereal and beautiful. Breifly in quite a spooky world. It made me feel like I was there and that was very cool and interesting. Very clever and unique design, good to experience something where you can still see the real world. Surreal and delightful! (It felt like) it was coming to life. Awestruck Relaxed Involved |
"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..."
"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.
"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!" Nostalgic (a lot of memory in spaces. ) What a joyous experience. Do more. Brilliant. Immersed in the image Fascinated. Entranced. I like the backwards and forwards and suspending the image. |
MAKING GROUND
Makers, moving image and physicality
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
Click on the images below then drag right to create the animation. Reverse the action by dragging left.
Looposcope |
mutoscope |
The walkerscope at Fabrica
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At 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 playful as they examined and amplified small details of movement by repetition. |
Flickerscopes in situ
Hand-cranked augmented reality
We 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.
BOX HILL FLICKERS FILM
Paper and digital photo animation of 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.
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. 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
"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
