HI, I'M BETSEY. THANKS FOR STOPPING BY.
I'm a composer and studio artist making projects connecting the dots between music, sound, visual art, place, storytelling, and technology; my work has been described by The New Yorker as 'psychologically complex, exposing how we orient ourselves with our ears.' Over the years I've directed and composed a feature-length documentary film and song cycle, improvised with an international radio art collective, created immersive audiovisual experiences, and composed chamber music and multimedia operas and soundwalks. I earned a Ph.D. in music composition at Princeton University, have held postdoctoral fellowships at Brown University and Harvard University, and have taught music, multimedia, public art, and video at Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the University of Colorado, where I currently serve as Assistant Professor of Critical Media Practices.
In many ways I consider myself a professional wanderer; I collect scraps of sound and narrative fragments from around the world (as well as in my own collection of sonic memories), and deconstruct and arrange them in ways that I hope are evocative. By slowing down, clarifying, and reworking these sonic (and sometimes visual) fragments, I try to recreate my experience of place in highly abstract ways.
I also like working on projects that engage public creativity and exploration. For the last several years, I've been designing playful situations that facilitate creative participation, often adapting the technology of our contemporary world -- mobile audio, digital video, interactive electronics -- to engage people creatively with the physical world around them. My doctoral dissertation analyzed some of the innovative ways that play, sound and technology can remake the experience of place. At a time when technology seems to seductively and incrementally envelop each of us in a solipsistic bubble, I believe we must instead learn to use it as a means of connection.
I've been lucky enough to collaborate with some great artists, musicians and filmmakers including August Black, Moving Star, Nick Hallett, Pamela Z, Luciano Chasso, Margaret Lancaster, Evidence, The Now Ensemble, The BSC, So Percussion, Tarab Cello Ensemble, the Nash Ensemble, Jennie Livingston, and Amy Harrison. My work has been presented at venues as disparate as the Denver Museum of Nature and Science's IMAX theater, 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 and the Gowanus.