Since the mid-1970s Garton participated in numerous independent and community media initiatives in Australia and South East Asia: from radio and public access video in his teens to computer networking in the late 1980s and 1990s with Pegasus Networks. Garton was motivated at an early age towards collaborative media art works, combining interests in music, performance and public media. In the past twenty-five years he has written and performed plays, joined and formed bands, written scores for television documentaries, penned countless songs, piano and electronic compositions, experimented with recording and performance techniques.