Samuel James has been a video artist and designer for contemporary performance companies and independent dancers for thirty years. Based in the Blue Mountains, NSW (Gundungurra/ Dharug), he works both as an independent artist and performance making collaborator working on almost 300 theatre and dance works with contemporary performance (Performance Space, Critical Path, Dancehouse, De Quincey Company, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Blacktown Arts Centre, Bankstown Arts Centre, Artshouse, FORM, PICA), with indigenous companies (Marrugeku, Blakdance, Jasmin Sheppard, Vernon Ah Kee) physical theatre companies (Erth, Legs on the Wall, Big hArt), visual theatre companies (Kantanka Creative, Talya Rubin, My Darling Patricia) and mixed ability companies (Back to Back Theatre, Dance Integrated Australia). In 2006 he won Best Dance Film at the Australian Dance Awards for a project with choreographer Julie-Anne Long with whom he made several live performance videos works of dancing with virtual bodies and presences. He has received two Green Room Award nominations for projection design in Nightgarden (2009) and The Piper (2014). In the music realm he has collaborated with percussion groups, Noreum Machi (Korea), Synergy Percussion and Ensemble Offspring making music videos and live projections in Australia and internationally. 

Artist commissions include Blik Blik Festival 2019 (Czech Republic), Dream Shelving (Campbelltown Arts Centre 2011), Amygdala: Fear Conditioning (Artspace 2010), The Cracks (Performance Space, Carriageworks 2010), Vivaria (Reeldance International Festival of Dance of Screen 2009). 

In working with dancers and environments, most of his experimentation connects the filmed and projected body to abstracted natural environments - the body giving gestural information to understand place through human presence. In his video drawings, the act of digital mark making engages with emergent phenomena in the physical realm.

He regularly takes part in international residencies for research and development of his video practice at LKV Trondheim, DEPO2015 Czech Republic, The Banff Centre, SìM Reykjavik, Artelés Finland and GlogauAIR Berlin. He has also developed and exhibited his installation work in regional Australia in places such as BigCi, Bilpin (2022), Bundanon Trust (2015), the Tanks Arts Centre Cairns (2012) and Broken Hill Art Exchange (2012).

He has an MFA from UNSW Art and Design on Digital Animism (2012).