Anna Henson
Artist, Educator, Experience Designer
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Selected Work
Work across moving image, XR, live performance, and experience design, driven by questions about emotion, embodied experience, and how designed systems shape the way people feel.
Somatic Avatars: AT_REACH Research in Addiction Recovery
A pilot study supported by the Rural Drug Addiction Research Center at the University of Nebraska studying embodied awareness and distress tolerance utilizing our novel Somatic Avatar Training, i.e. combining yoga with the creation and viewing of personalized movement-animated avatars. Research published in the Journal of Technology and Behavioral Science.
AVATAR_AR: Co-Creation Project & Innovation in Documentary Media Course
A digital storytelling project utilizing co-creation methodologies and a design-justice lens to create short web-first documentary stories made collaboratively with people in recovery from addiction, working to mitigate stigma on individual, institutional, and societal levels.
HBO / The Mill: Lovecraft Sanctum VR
A storytelling experience that brought the works of James Baldwin, Sonia Sanchez and Janelle Monae to VR, based on the hit HBO show Lovecraft Country.
Wake: Co-located, Co-Present Mixed Reality Experience
A guided mixed reality experience for one participant in-headset, one dancer, and one facilitator. Wake immerses participants in a virtual environment where they encounter a co-located, virtually present dancer through real-time volumetric video, exploring embodied interaction, kinesthetic awareness, and the shifting boundaries between physical and digital. Created in collaboration with slowdanger.
Body, My Body: Music Video & Animation Research
A music video collaboration with award-winning movement duo slowdanger, using volumetric capture and motion capture rigged to photogrammetry body scans, exploring the continuum between photo-real and avatar representations of self.
far field
far field is a collaborative web-XR and VR experience by Anna Henson and slowdanger that transforms pandemic-era Zoom interactions and personal recordings into an embodied virtual archive, exploring distance, perception, and fragmented presence across shared digital space. Shown at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as part of National Dance Day.
Cello Quartet: Trimpin
Projection Design for MacArthur Genius awardee Trimpin's latest experimental music performance, Cello Quartet. Premiered at Other Minds Festival in San Francisco.
Glass Inward
An immersive theater work based on the writings of Virginia Woolf, in which live performance, custom interactive interfaces, and networked audience-performer surveillance converge to explore identity, the gaze, and the digital double. Commissioned by the Island Theatre Company, presented at Defibrillator Gallery, Chicago.
Projection Design
A selection of projection design work spanning Broadway, Off-Broadway, experimental theater, and international production, including Grounded (dir. Julie Taymor), Trip of Love, Soft Power, Bora Yoon: Sunken Cathedral, and Farewell My Concubine.
Moonlit: Immersive Experience Design and UX & Extended Theater Course
Moonlit was a collaboratively devised immersive theater production created by undergraduate EMA students and MFA Theater Design candidates in my Extended Theater course at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, integrating worldbuilding, interactive design, and emerging technologies into a multi-room experience that emphasized audience agency and culminated in a ticketed public run supported by Meow Wolf mentors.
Big Fish: Musical Production & Projection Design Course
Projection design for the University of Nebraska–Lincoln's production of Big Fish, developed through a full-semester course in which students designed, produced, and executed all projection content in close collaboration with the theatrical team.
Molt: MIX NYC
An immersive video installation exploring transformation and the shedding of identity, created in collaboration with Shawn Escarciga. Presented at MIX NYC 2015: The New York Queer Experimental Film Festival.
Body, My Body: Embodied VR
A participatory VR experience for one guest and two dancers, exploring embodiment, touch, and proprioception through real-time tracked movement reflected in the virtual environment.
Styles and Customs of the 2020s
A produced VR experience transporting viewers from an ancient cave into four speculative futures shaped by climate change, social unrest, and shifting global economics. Built by Scatter, based on a creative brief by DIS, featuring artists Rachel Rossin, Kim Laughton, and Ian Warburton.
Art && Code: Weird Reality
A public VR exhibition featuring 18 artist installations, produced as part of Weird Reality: A Conference for Emerging Immersive Media, hosted by the Frank-Ratchye Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University and curated by Golan Levin. Presented at the Ace Hotel, Pittsburgh, 2016.
VR Home
A research project exploring hybrid virtual-physical home environments through VR prototypes, investigating personalization, privacy, and comfort for people in varied living situations. Built for HTC Vive with Unity 3D and Maya, led by Dr. Jessica Hammer with funding from Verizon.