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Experimental Communication

Phoebe Hayes

Attaching a camera to a kite to document and survey the world below.

I am a London-based artist-researcher, currently studying MA Visual Communication. My chosen pathway - Experimental Communication - is about communicating ideas through experimental methods. My practice is interdisciplinary, exploring the inter-relations between landscape, film and site-specific works. 

I was awarded the Gordon Peter Pickard Drawing Grant for which I visited different sites such as Folkestone and Dungeness in the UK, using drawing as a tool to interact with the landscape. I showed the work in an exhibition at the Royal College of Art titled ‘Common Ground’ in December 2021. I am also a recipient of The Pokémon Scholarship. 

I will show my work at The Photographers Gallery for the conference, ‘Levels of Life, Photography, Imaging and the Vertical Perspective’. This event and exhibition will take place on 1 and 2 July 2022.

Degree Details

School of CommunicationVisual Communication (MA)Experimental Communication

Sponsor: The Pokémon Scholarship

Show Location: Battersea campus: Studio Building, Ground floor

Phoebe sitting on Wimbledon Common inflating a giant red weather balloon.

What if I told you that I took a balloon for a walk?

My process involves a critical (re)mapping of the relations between camera and landscape and the personal and political, across an ever-mutating present. My practice is grounded in a desire to methodologically explore alternative experiences and understandings of landscape in relation to concepts of dislocation, slowness and the poetics of information gathering, which are embodied in my practice. I consider how images and sites are encountered, interpreted and misinterpreted; embracing abstraction.  

Through exploring high altitude photography and film, I question how we can come up with ways of recording from a human perspective that are alternatives to the ubiquity of surveillance capitalism. Through attaching cameras to flying satellites and balloons, I discover ideas informed by a situated response to the unpredictability of landscape. My most recent project 'Community Satellites' is a durational photography project which documents perspective shifts in distance and time with the aim to see the geographical changes in five, ten and twenty years.

The different ways we can come together and share conversations are integral to my work and I warmly encourage people to get in touch if they would like to talk about any of the themes or works presented.



Community Satellites — A film detailing a five-hour walk across Wimbledon Common, retracing a predicted flight path of a lost weather balloon which had previously been released into the atmosphere. The footage presents a moving image of this rapidly changing geography and is intended as a provocation for an alternative conversation that is needed in the world, because to be (dis)located and with the capacity to get lost we may see or sense anew.
Still frame from the film detailing the five-hour walk across Wimbledon Common.
Community Satellites — Still frame from the film detailing the five-hour walk across Wimbledon Common. This five-hour film documents a dual perspective with a view from the earth and a view from the sky. The work examines a stretching of distance and time as the ground and the air converse.
Attaching a camera to a meteorological balloon and completing a series of walks across Wimbledon Common.
Community Satellites — Using the air as my site, I attached a camera to a 75g meteorological weather balloon on a string and completing a series of sensory walks across Wimbledon Common.
film detailing the view of London's commons from the camera attached to the weather balloon.
Community Satellites — Still frames from the film detailing the view of London's commons from the camera attached to the weather balloon.
Community Satellites — A short clip of a film detailing the weather balloon beginning its ascent into the atmosphere.
image from a film documenting the view from a kite.
Community Satellites — A still image from a film documenting the view from a kite. The series of photographs explore the fabric of the land and the changing geography. It documents the movement of communities through horizontal conversation and the vertical view perspective.
Community Satellites — showing the space between the object in the sky and the Earth.
Community Satellites — showing the space between the object in the sky and the Earth.
Still frame from the film detailing the five-hour walk across Wimbledon Common.
Community Satellites — Still frame from the film detailing the five-hour walk across Wimbledon Common. A geo-projection piece detailing the method for taking the curved surface of the Earth and displaying it on something flat.
Community Satellites - Still frame from the film detailing the five-hour walk across Wimbledon Common, using Lidar technology to identify traces, marks, paths and boundaries in the Earth's surface.
Community Satellites - Still frame from the film detailing the five-hour walk across Wimbledon Common, using Lidar technology to identify traces, marks, paths and boundaries in the Earth's surface.

Community Satellites

is a project which explores London’s commons using cameras attached to high altitude balloons to survey the world below. The photography-based work explores aerial views, which offer a perspective from which the human and more-than-human impact on the Earth can be made visible. The work and themes question how we might come up with ways of recording with humanity as a process that are alternatives to the ubiquity of surveillance capitalism. The aerial view from flying satellites offers a perspective in which to view the landscape with the aim to question, interpret and misinterpret information. This work explores the space between the object in the sky and the Earth, connecting the ground to the air through a horizontal conversation and a vertical view. I completed a series of sensory walks with a helium-filled balloon suspended overhead with a piece of string. Resembling that of children’s play, I repurposed a jovial and accessible object – the balloon – into a mapping tool. This human and therefore fallible recording method considers the gaps, inaccuracies and missing parts as inherent to the work – as important as the recollections themselves. In the gaps, fragments and partial views, we see the world from a position of particularity. 

Over a five-hour walk across Wimbledon Common, I retraced a predicted flight path of a lost weather balloon which I had previously released into the atmosphere. This five-hour film documents a dual perspective with a view from the Earth and a view from the sky. The footage recorded from the weather balloon glitches and wavers and gets entangled with the world below. The work examines a stretching of distance and time as the ground and the air converse. The film presents a moving image of this rapidly changing geography and is intended as a provocation for an alternative conversation that is urgently needed in the world, because to be (dis)located and with the capacity to get lost we may see or sense anew.



Assembling the circular scroll in and around the stone circle.
360 Degree Drawing — Assembling the circular scroll in and around the stone circle. I drew my surroundings as the Earth moved, a quarter of a degree a second, thus creating a drawing which tells the time.
Drawing in Hascome's stone circle.
360 Degree Drawing — Drawing in Hascome's stone circle. I am interested in doing these drawings seasonally, to see the changes in the landscape over time.
Drawing and expedition plans.
360 Degree Drawing — Drawing and expedition plans.
drawing my surroundings as the earth moved, a quarter of a degree a second.
360 Degree Drawing — 1/5 1mx1m landscape drawing.
Poster and type design inspired by fragments and site-samples collected from our travels to Hascombe
Common Ground Exhibition — Poster and type design inspired by fragments and site-samples collected from our travels to Hascombe, Dungeness and Whitby with peer Junyi Zhang. On the left, a rock collected and archived from the Denge Sound Mirrors.
Common Ground Exhibition — An exhibition which dwelled on multiple sites around the UK and invited audiences to be a part of the space which was curated to consider the interaction between humans, t
Common Ground Exhibition — An exhibition which dwelled on multiple sites around the UK and invited audiences to be a part of the space which was curated to consider the interaction between humans, the more-than-human and places.

Travel to Inform Drawing

I consider drawing as a tool in my practice to explore, re-think and re-feel the landscape. I visited Hascombe’s stone circle – a landmark aligned with the sun and the moon, which forms a complex prehistoric calendar. Here, I created a 360 degree scroll and drew my surroundings as the Earth moved, a quarter of a degree a second, subsequently creating a drawing which tells the time. The Sound Mirrors in Dungeness was my second site I visited, where I conducted listening exercises and site-specific drawings. The panoramic drawing installation then became an observatory discussion space, in which audiences could walk in and around the drawings.

With peer Junyi Zhang, we hosted an exhibition 'Common Ground' which dwelled on multiple sites around the UK and invited audiences to be a part of the space which was curated to consider the interaction between humans and places.


The Pokémon Scholarship

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Royal College of Art

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