Nothing RAM is the end product of a relatively long evolutionary process of merging multimedia, performance and new music. This process has led me to non-linear structures and interactive interfaces, while retaining my cinematic aesthetic and often deeply personal narrative. The work focuses on the traumatic and the transcendent in our cultural myths, religious beliefs, and world views, twisted and embedded into our culture. This work which is dark and funny (it’s been called American Gothic), dissects the moving parts of trauma buried in our society. Through the telescope of our collective stories and the microscope of personal revelations, the work repurposes these often vicious cycles and incorporates them into music, such as in Miracles in Reverse. In Nothing RAM, people and history seem to be caught in a whirlpool spinning in a mysterious pattern of distorted narratives and memories. How we survive these memories, how we distort them, how we store, access and replay them gets equal time in this life’s reflections.
Miracles in Reverse, an interactive DVD-ROM and live multimedia performance, is about personal memory… a kind of local memory... a close-up. Miracles is a self-portrait, but presents the self as a process, not as a fixed entity. In the DVD-ROM version of Miracles, the interactive user/player is part of the process. Inspired by DJs, the user can scratch/scrub the media with the rhythmic movements of the mouse. The user can play Heyward's 'life movies' like a musical instrument. Heyward's life story, with a focus on trauma, is seen through the eyes of Jesus, Mom, and an alien. Music composed by Heyward and Greg Smith, with additional music by Michael Kott and Dwight Loop.
Points of View is a series of faux windows using media on large flat screens that documents street and natural continuums, intermittently interrupted by theatrical productions and natural events such as storms. The windows function as clocks, with 24 hours of media displayed in each 'window' flat screen and scene changes on the hour.
In Shock & Allah, one set of windows looks out onto a desert landscape next to the largest marine base in the world, where staged and documentary scenes unfold, including biblical scenes, real war maneuvers, animals attempting to survive, a backyard party, children at play, weather scenes, strange aerial events, and more. This part of the triptych is the medium shot. Music by Greg Smith.
One window overlooks Cortlandt Alley in lower Manhattan, a location that is regularly used by production companies for film and TV, often depicting scenes of violence.
Another window faces the seashore, where animals scavenge for food as extreme weather washes away the shoreline.