Born in Adelaide, Australia in 1957, new media artist Simon Biggs emerged as one of a small number of Australian artists during the 1970’s who were experimenting with electronic and digital media. With initial influences from diverse sources, such as his father’s work as a first generation computer scientist, 1960’s experimental media artists Alan Sonfist and Hans Haacke, computer graphics pioneers Manfred Mohr and Vera Molnar, environmental artists Dennis Oppenheim and Robert Smithson and systems based practitioners as distinct as John Cage and Sol Lewitt, Biggs’s work negotiated a path between late Modernist and early Post-Modern trends, sharing some characteristics with his peers in Australia at that time (Stelarc, Peter Callas, Jill Scott and Steve Jones, amongst them) but producing work generally removed from mainstream contemporary Australian arts practice.
Biggs’s own practice during this period included work with computer-generated animation, interactive installation, internet based artworks and work for CD-ROM. He collaborated with several composers, including Amsterdam based Australian violinist and composer Jon Rose, Dutch composer Ernst Oosterveld, Berlin composer and sound artist Hans Peter Kuhn and London based composers and musicians Stuart Jones and Kaffe Mathews. From the mid-1990’s, as his interest in immersive media and full body interaction grew, Biggs worked with actors and dancers in various contexts and collaborated with the Mary Ward Theatre Group and choreographers such as Stephen Petronio, Sarah Rubidge and Sue Hawksley, the latter whom he continues to collaborate closely with. Works produced during this time and since have been presented at numerous international venues, including Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool, Whitechapel, South Bank Centre, New British Library, ICA London, CCA Glasgow, Ikon Birmingham, Centre George Pompidou, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Akademy der Kunste Berlin, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Centre for Contemporary Art Warsaw, Musea Mimara Zagreb, MAXXI Rome, Macau Arts Museum, Cameraworks and New Langton Arts in San Francisco, Walker Art Center, Brown University Providence, Paco des Artes Sao Paulo, Museo Futuro Rio de Janeiro and McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, NZ.