Outshifts ‘unregarded places, easily overlooked small landscapes’ – Outshift: Rachel Henson and Neil Manuell

Discarded book page with the words ‘happy pills’ visible in grass on a hillside with a tower block in the distance in low evening light.
Discarded book page with the words ‘happy pills’ visible in grass on a hillside with a tower block in the distance in low evening light. Credit: Rachel Henson
Discarded book page with the words ‘happy pills’ visible in grass on a hillside with a tower block in the distance in low evening light.
Discarded book page with the words ‘happy pills’ visible in grass on a hillside with a tower block in the distance in low evening light. Credit: Rachel Henson

Photo animations collected while walking out of built-up areas in Brighton and Hove. 

Viewed on a web-based custom-made app, or ‘spooler,’ which allows the viewer to play with the speed, forward and rewind the sequence, echoing the way a walker animates the landscape as she walks it.  

Best viewed on a touch screen.

https://www.outshift.org.uk/outshifts.html

Henson explores how walking gives rise to altered states of attention. Using animation and moving image, she makes work about experiences of specific locations, showing the work immersively in situ, or in a way that involves the viewer’s physicality. With creative technologist Neil Manuell she invents lo-fi devices and ways of using AR and VR to create experiences that build on, rather than disrupt, the perceptive ‘flow’ of walking. 

Outshift has been commissioned by festivals in the UK and abroad, and for natural and heritage organisations. Several projects have involved working with communities to communicate experiences of particular locations.