Assistant Professor Betsey Biggs uses technology to combine image and sound in site-specific works, audiovisual performances, interactive installations, public interventions, relational projects, films and videos, musical compositions and multimedia theatrical works. Her body of work connects the dots between sound, music, visual art, place, storytelling and technology. It also deconstructs and arranges scraps of sound and image to clarify and recreate the experience of place, as well as adapting the technology of our contemporary world 鈥� mobile audio, digital video, interactive electronics 鈥� to engage people creatively with the physical and social worlds around them.
Her work has been presented at ISSUE Project Room, the Abrons Arts Center, Roulette, the Conflux Festival, MASSMoCA, Brown University, Harvard University, Sundance Film Festival, Hong Kong鈥檚 Videotage and on the streets of Oakland, CA and Brooklyn, NY. 听She has collaborated with Nick Hallett, Pamela Z, Luciano Chasso, Margaret Lancaster, Evidence, The Now Ensemble, The BSC, So Percussion, Tarab Cello Ensemble, the Nash Ensemble, Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble and filmmakers Jennie Livingston and Amy Harrison. Her largest recent project, 鈥淪unken Gardens鈥�, a large outdoor sound installation for the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, employs induction loops to create eighteen fields of audio composed from musical and textual fragments inspired by the Jules Verne novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A new musical work, 鈥淭eewinot鈥澨齣s a sonic time lapse of the natural history of the Grand Teton mountains and will be premiered at several national parks in July 2016 by the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble.
Biggs earned degrees in English Literature and Music from Colorado College and Mills College respectively and a PhD in Music Composition from Princeton University. She has also held fellowships at Brown University and Harvard University. She has taught at Princeton, Brown and The Rhode Island School of Design.