Betsey Biggs

Betsey Biggs is a composer and visual artist. Her work connects the dots between music, sound, visual art, place, storytelling, and technology, and has been described by The New Yorker as “psychologically complex, exposing how we orient ourselves with our ears.” She often collects scraps of sound and narrative fragments she encounters, and evocatively deconstructs and arranges them. By slowing down, clarifying, and reworking these sonic (and sometimes visual) fragments, she recreates her experience of place in highly abstract ways. Her projects create playful situations that facilitate creative participation, often adapting the technology of our contemporary world – mobile audio, digital video, interactive electronics – to engage meaningfully with the physical world around us.  She has collaborated with Margaret Lancaster, Evidence, The Now Ensemble, The BSC, So Percussion, Tarab Cello Ensemble, the Nash Ensemble and filmmakers Jennie Livingston and Amy Harrison. Her work has been presented at ISSUE Project Room, Abrons Arts Center, Roulette, the Conflux Festival, MASSMoCA, Sundance Film Festival, Hong Kong’s Videotage, and on the streets of Oakland, Red Hook, Williamsburg, the Gowanus. and Tin Pan Alley. Biggs holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University, taught at Brown University for three years, and is currently holds a Sawyer Fellowship at Harvard University.