OUTSHIFT

The Living Coast Residency




Looking for "shimmer," natural phenomena that catch our eye and hold our attention, a shorthand for the intangible ways biodiverse environments act on physical and mental health.
                               


 

The Yolngu term bir'yan, translated as ‘shimmer’ or 'brilliance,' describes the way the eye is captured by the ‘rippling intra-activity’ of lively ecological relationships honed over millennia.* Outshift walked with land guardians, people who engage their communities with protecting nearby wild, finding out that once you see marvels in the scruffy patches of wild walkable from your own front door, they become part of home rather than incidental or expendable. There were three sites: Waterhall, which is being wilded, Benfield Valley which is under threat, and Coldean, where deep community objection could not halt a housing development.

Work was published as an Instagram take-over for Fabrica Gallery and exhibited on ONCA Barge as a short film, sound essay, interactive videowork, and as a ‘walkerscope’ interactive using a Kinect sensor.
*Deborah Bird Rose, 'Shimmer,' Edinburgh University Press 2022
Thanks to Polly Eason of Coldean Community Organisation, Helen Forester of Benfield Valley Project, and Kim Greaves from Friends of Waterhall.
Commissioned by Fabrica, ONCA and The Living Coast UNESCO Biosphere

 

Coldean

Interactive video artwork co-designed with Neil Manuell


ONBOARDING

Sound and pace respond to swipe speed.

“I really like how you’re sort of engaging with the movement of what’s going on but you can just sort of let go as well and watch it and how you move it still affects what is happening and how.”
LINK TO APP
Use a TOUCHSCREEN
Sound up Made during construction of housing on a rich area of ancient chalk grassland between the bypass and a fast feeder road.

Created through conversations with people who live nearby.




Outshift mapped exact locations and crafted new what3words descriptions with Helen Forester, Polly Eason and Kim Greaves.
///eager.wonderfully.daily
trees all the way to the sea.grasses headbanging at a concert.strawberry moon rising

Helen Forester of Benfield Valley Project tells me that putting across the value of this easily accessible wild space in terms of its health giving qualities carries no weight with decision makers during community consultations, despite its proven levelling effect on income based health disparity.
///latest.earth.wisely
raw.nature.being.awesome




"It's your own small landscape that you can actually enact change on. I think microcosm is the right word to describe the shimmer and that touches an emotional place that not many things do." Lawrence Leather, climate activist and chalk grassland restorer
///drums.bliss.shadow
anthill.Rockrose.Cistus Forester.grassland seedbank


Do biodiverse landscapes give of more of a shimmer? Could the shimmer index of a site be a shorthand for its health-giving properties?

"You never feel alone out here." Kim Greaves, Friends of Waterhall

Making Ground


Residency exploring hand-cranked and digital interactives
Documenting a collaboration on community owned land


















Documenting Making Ground, a collaboration between ceramicist Elaine Bolt, willow worker Annemarie O'Sullivan on community owned land at Sacred Earth, a former brickworks.

After filming choreographies of making in place and I created new physical and digital ways of triggering the persistance-of-vision illusion that makes a sequences of images into moving-image:

tugged mutoscopes on loops of cloth, a cranked triptych of mutoscopes in a found brick mould, and digital interactives co-designed with Neil Manuell: swiping a touch screen or walking towards a projection.

Exhibited at Make Lewes Festival and as part of a Making Space Residency at Fabrica.