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Experimental Communication

Felix Bayley-Higgins

Ideas are at the centre of my work. Most of what I make is about assisting them to skate outward, into formats where they can be compelling for others. Following the idea to whichever format suits it best has taken the projects I do into a range of different media. These media formats themselves are of equal creative interest to me, as materials to work with in their own right.

Guided by curiosity, lots of my work is about examining visual culture through in-depth research and experimental making. In doing this, my tendency is to balance both meticulous and intuitive approaches. I’m trying to shape new contexts for media samples, by deconstructing and reconfiguring them or arranging them as part of a collection of other media. 

I’m also part of Slow Dance, described by Dazed and Confused Magazine as “the collective at the cutting edge of London’s live music scene”. It's through this platform that I’ve developed a practice creating audio-visual outcomes in various capacities - from an installation commission from The Royal Academy of Arts to a scheduled tour of A/V shows around Japan, postponed due to Coronavirus.

Degree Details

School of Communication

Experimental Communication
Felix Bayley-Higgins

Collaborative dialogues are really important to my work. Don't hesitate to get in touch with any thoughts, I'm always looking to meet new people to discuss and work with.

Hülpüsch Narrated Display — A custom display table showing fragments from across the Hülpüsch project as a whole. An audio narration lays out the linkages between them.
W. Hülpüsch Observations Archive
W. Hülpüsch Observations Archive — A scan from the print archive I arranged of Willem's photographs, drawings and journal entries. Showing the first section which lays out all items as standalone images, without any kind of framing or connections offered by myself.
W. Hülpüsch Observations Archive
W. Hülpüsch Observations Archive — A scan from the print archive I arranged of Willem's photographs, drawings and journal entries. Showing the section including my analytical commentary on his observations.
W. Hülpüsch Observations Archive
W. Hülpüsch Observations Archive — A scan from the print archive I arranged of Willem's photographs, drawings and journal entries. Showing the section including my analytical commentary on his observations.
W. Hülpüsch Observations Archive
W. Hülpüsch Observations Archive — A scan from the print archive I arranged of Willem's photographs, drawings and journal entries. Showing the section including my analytical commentary on his observations.
W. Hülpüsch Observations Archive
W. Hülpüsch Observations Archive — A scan from the print archive I arranged of Willem's photographs, drawings and journal entries. Showing the section including my analytical commentary on his observations.
Detail from W. Hülpüsch Observations Archive
Detail from W. Hülpüsch Observations Archive — A magnified scan from the print archive I arranged of Willem's photographs, drawings and journal entries. Showing the section including my analytical commentary on his observations.
Swarm of Midges — One of many collaborative experiments stemming from the archive of Willem's observations. Willem had filmed a flock of midges which he saw flying around a pond. We discussed the formations the midges rotate in and out of whilst flying around each-other. I asked him for a copy of the footage, which I edited to isolate and track each individual midge - illuminating it as a white dot against a black background to reveal the midges flight patterns more clearly.
Hülpüsch Project Mapped to Timeline
Hülpüsch Project Mapped to Timeline
Hülpüsch Project Mapped to Architectural Drawing of Willem's Apartment
Hülpüsch Project Mapped to Architectural Drawing of Willem's Apartment
Hülpüsch Project Research Methodology Diagram
Hülpüsch Project Research Methodology Diagram
Architectural Comparison: Willem's Apartment and Edison's Black Maria
Architectural Comparison: Willem's Apartment and Edison's Black Maria
Gumshoe Mix - Tracklist
Gumshoe Mix - Tracklist — A 45 minute sound mix called Gumshoe. This is the tracklist for the mix, a collection of the music used in the pursuit scenes of detective films. The mix acts as a study of how the trope of detectives in pursuit is rendered in different ways through sound. As well as the original soundtracked instrumentals, the mix contains experimental passages whereby the musical elements of these tracks are broken up and sampled. 

Hülpüsch is a discursive project anchored in my collaboration with 82 year old Willem Hülpüsch around his observational photographs, journal and drawings. We've been in dialogue for over two years now after sharing a conversation following a lecture we both attended in late 2018. My interest in Willem’s observations stems from his past career as a private investigator whilst living in Germany.

The project has many outputs, which can be loosely grouped around 3 different levels.

1) An archive I arranged of Willems observations, featuring my analytical commentary on his work.

2) Collaborative making experiments, born out of our dialogue together.

3) A network of research stemming from everything within the first two levels.

Part of the project deals with the different ways databases of research and making can be structured, elements from all three levels feed into and animate each-other. I developed new methodologies to guide this project specifically, these processes are as much a part of the project as any visual or sound outcomes. In this way Hülpüsch is most cohesive when understood as an eco-system, a narrative which skates across a range of media. What began as a collaboration with an 82 year old ex-private investigator broadened into an attempt to map the importance of mystery and myths in cultural media.


Tropics/ HoldHold — Full video releasing July 2021
Video Still #1
Video Still #1
Video Still #2
Video Still #2
Video Still #3
Video Still #3

A Music Video I directed for the the new Glows double single release.

TEMP TCR Visual Identity
TEMP TCR Visual Identity
TEMP TCR#1 Open Edit
TEMP TCR#1 Open Edit — TEMP TCR #1 is one of the three formats, a live improvised A/V experiment. Participants bring with them RAW sound and image files, extrapolated out from their more resolved projects. The group un-packs, samples and re-sequences these files in an improvised and transparent editing process. TEMP TCR #1: 26th June 7:30PM at Ugly Duck London featuring Mark Prendergast, Henry Bradley and More TBC
TEMP TCR Formats
TEMP TCR Formats
'Open Edit' A/V Rig Diagram
'Open Edit' A/V Rig Diagram

TEMP TCR is temporary television studio set up and co-hosted by Felix Bayley-Higgins and Louise Gholam. Both are looking into the visual languages, history and culture surrounding video broadcasting in their respective personal practices. TEMP TCR is the first outing of a platform they’re currently developing to build a community of people working with experimental video, sound and research methodologies in unique ways. The platform functions by inviting individuals to engage with a set of different formats. Placing a focus on intuitive making these formats are specifically designed to showcase people’s underlying interests, methodologies and sensibility.


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Excerpt #1
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Excerpt #4
Excerpt #4
Excerpt #4
Excerpt #4
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Excerpt #6

Excerpts from an ongoing research project into using alternative processes to create musical elements. Imagery is used as in two ways; as a source material from which to generate compositional structure, melody and rhythm, and as a kind of notation to record abstract musical ideas or atmospheres. Many of the experiments reconfigure the syntax of traditional sheet music. These images are aids to devising new systems for reading, transcribing, translating and assembling sound. The sound created in tandem with this collection of imagery is due for release later this year.

'Often Return' at the Royal Academy of Arts — An installation commission for The Royal Academy of Arts created in collaboration with GG Skips. Referencing the concepts of transit spaces, corporate ambience and lobby music. Having pre-gathered extensive libraries of audio & visual fragments from a range of historic worlds, the installation involved the mass collision of these cultural samples. The contents of the libraries were systematically re-sampled in the corridor which connects the RA’s new development to its historic Burlington house.
E.M.U #4 — EMU is a group comprised of myself and a rotating cast of musicians. We perform entirely improvised shows in which the film projections I control and the unfolding soundscape played by the musicians alternate in taking the role of conductor. Using video as an instrument, I reshuffle a collection of pre-filmed clips into a new narrative live in each performance. The musicians continually respond, scoring the shifting imagery as its projected and vice versa - forming a constant feedback loop between the two.
Brainchild Festival Live Session
Launch Project
Brainchild Festival Live Session

Documentation of performance and installation audio-visual work dealing with the relationship between sound and moving image.

Monobrow #1
Monobrow #1 — Event Poster

Monobrow is a podcast created in collaboration with artist Jonny Drewek. We’re really interested in the relationship between Pop culture and Experimental art.

We’ve been discussing it for a year now: Thoughts vs. Feelings. Knowing naivety. Irony. Memes. Intellectual posturing.

We’ve found a lot of amazing work which has great depth but also a direct and uncomplicated attitude towards its audience, seeking genuine engagement instead of spamming art language.

These truly experimental practitioners operate mainly on the internet, outside of the conventions of institutional art spaces. For some reason, confronting this freaks everyone at art school out quite a lot, including us at times.

We want to share our findings and expand our knowledge by speaking directly to these pioneering practitioners. Join us as we talk horseshoes, music, old brains, diagrams and more with @La_Meme_Young to try and chart new relationships between experimental art and popular culture.