Megan Heyward
Senior Lecturer, Creative Practices Group
BA (UTS), MFA (UNSW)
Email: Megan.Heyward@uts.edu.au
Phone: +61 2 9514 2329
Fax: +61 2 9514 4344
Room: CB03.03.43 (map)
Mailing address: PO Box 123,
Broadway NSW 2007,
Australia
Biography
Megan Heyward is a new media producer and educator whose creative work integrates narrative and new media technologies. Experiences of memory and recollection are recurrent themes in her work. Funded twice by the Australian Film Commission to develop significant, innovative new media projects; her works, I Am A Singer (1997) and of day, of night (2002) have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the MILIA New Talent Pavilion (France), ISEA (Japan), Festival of Cinema and New Media (Canada), Contact Zones (USA), Videobrasil (Brazil), Viper (Switzerland), Stuttgarter Filmwinter (Germany), and Digital Storytelling Festival (USA). Megan has won and received high commendations of two Australian AIMIA new media awards, and her works have been finalists in a range of national and international awards and competitions. Her large experimental new media narrative of day, of night was published by major U.S new media publisher, Eastgate Systems, in 2005.
Working more recently with locative and mobile technologies, in 2005 her locative documentary project, traces: stories written upon this town was exhibited at the Opera House, Adelaide Festival and later, the Centre Pompidou, Paris In July 2007 as part of the d'Art exhibition. Her participatory mobile sms project 'p.u.ls.e' was selected for development at the Australia's Council's 'Story of the Future' LAMP residency. Since 2007 Megan has been working on her D.C.A, Pilgrim, an experimental documentary for online and locative media which explores relationships between pilgrimage, place and locative media.
Megan is a Senior Lecturer in Media Arts and Production in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney.
For more information about Megan's creative practice and research, check out her blog, "spaces in between time" (open an external site)
Teaching areas
Media arts & production, Writing & cultural studies
Research
Research interests
Media arts, new media, online narrative, online documentary, locative media, electronic writing
Publications
Exhibited creative works
Heyward, M.E. 2005, 'Traces', Sydney Opera House Exhibition Hall, dLux Media Arts, http://dlux.org.au/mobilejourneys/meganheyward.html.
View/Download from: UTSePress
Other exhibited creative works
Heyward, M.E. 2010, 'Cleanse', Memory Flows, Centre for Media Arts Innovation, UTS, Newington Armory, Sydney Olympic Park Authority, Homebush Bay, Sydney.
View description>>
"Cleanse" is a media artwork commissioned for the Memory Flows exhibition at The Newington Armory, Sydney Olympic Park, from May 14- June 20, 2010. Supported by national, competitive funding from the InterArts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts, Memory Flows was also supported by the Sydney Olympic Park Authority, the ABC and UTS. Memory Flows featured fifteen media artworks, curated by Norie Neumark, Deb Turnbull and Sophia Kouyoumdjian. The Memory Flows exhibition was opened by Judith Blackall of the Museum of Contemporary Art, featured a public forum on June 20, 2010, and although open for only 15 exhibition days, was seen by an astounding 2,700 gallery visitors. "Cleanse" is a creative mixed media artwork involving video, audio, data projection and various river artefacts. It is exploration of memory and place, in particular the shifting narratives associated with SydneyÔ++s Parramatta River, and a creative artwork response to the riverÔ++s murky, contentious past. The Memory Flows exhibition was enormously successful in terms of gallery attendees, and its impact in bringing media art to new audiences. Additionally, Memory Flows was reviewed in the national arts publication, RealTime Arts Online. "Cleanse" was one of the artworks in the exhibition to be singled out for particular praise in this review. http://www.realtimearts.net/article/97/9919
Heyward, M.E. 2009, 'Vivid Fragments', Vagabond Holes: David McComb and The Triffids, Fremantle Press, Fremantle, Australia, pp. 283-289.
View/Download from: UTSePress
Heyward, M.E. 2004, 'Message', Pathiharn Electron, Swiss Media Arts, INIVA.
Recorded/rendered creative work
Heyward, M.E. 2005, 'of day, of night', Eastgate systems, Watertown, Massachusettes, USA.
View/Download from: UTSePress
View description>>
Background of day, of night is a major published interactive digital media work. Funded competitively by the Australian Film Commission, exhibited and published internationally, of day, of night operates at the intersection of narrative and interactive media forms. Integrating video, audio, stills, textual and interactive components, it is a major electronic hypertext notable for its rich visual and aural landscapes, strong narrative, and innovative fusion of filmic, textual and audio elements. The high degree of research, creativity and quality represented by of day, of night can be demonstrated by its worldwide exhibition (including Australia, Japan, USA, Europe), its nomination for and high commendations in significant peer reviewed awards (Festival Awards for Literature, AIMIA) and its commercial publication in 2005 by major US hypertext publisher, Eastgate Systems. Contribution Megan Heyward is the original writer, director, producer, graphic designer, video editor, and interactive programmer of the work. Significance The significance of this research is that it extends and redefines traditional notions of narrative through its engagement with electronic, interactive, hypertextual media forms. In of day, of night, traditional experiences of both textual and filmic forms are extended through the fusion of textual, graphic, and filmic media in the work. The impacts of interactivity on narrative form are explored through the increased participation and user control possible in the reading of the work. of day, of night is a unique creative fusion of narrative and interactivity, recognised through international publication, exhibition, awards and peer review.
