[Reader-list] ..a post.ing as yet not sent...

[ap][e][ologger]

At 11:04 AM 18/09/01 +0200, philip pocock wrote:
>save your out-of-date concrete poetry to yourself. were you a ee cummings and
>the clock was wound back 50 years i might delve in to read and image your
>gibberish.
>
>email is a voice and ee cummings was a response to that in print media.
update
>and cut the nostalgia. you wont get my attention.
>

dear readers,

 of course my last posting was in no way intended to "get the attention" of
list members like philip, and i wasn't trying at all to discuss my personal
wurk. howeva, in light of this ][offensive and highly inappropriate][
response, i'll post some quotes regarding the wurk i produce in order to
give it some context.

][mez][

******************

 "...Mez's writing proceeds with irregular energy... in the sense of the
type of context sensitivities she sets up that proceed simultaneously in
various directions. Ingenious in the manner of the representation of
'regular expressions' in the mathematics of computer science, for instance.
As though it contained its own hyper links..her voice is electric and
acoustic in a single phrase.....and the sense of sound is phenomenal, the
humour startling...Mez's language...is particularly strong in voice. Strong
in voice and bristling with innovation and possibility. This is, in itself,
'serious'. Past 'language poetry', for instance. Suited to this medium in
important ways."

-Jim Andrews, webartery



"mez's writings are, in my view, examples of reflecting the virulence of
digital text without actually coding in programming language. - The beauty
of 'mezangelle' is that it uses elements of programming language syntax as
material, i.e. reflecting formal programming language without being one. Of
course, many other aesthetic options in Internet poetry exist, and many of
them may have an aesthetics which totally separates the textuality of the
digital poem from the internal textuality of the machine. I just prefer if
the latter is the product of an aesthetically conscious decision _against_
algorithmic coding (i.e. as its negative reflection)
The code poetry of,
among others, mez, Alan Sondheim and Ted Warnell seems to build on two
developments a) the re-coding of traditional pictorial ASCII art into
amimetical noise signals by net artists like Jodi, antiorp, mi-ga and
Frederic Madre, (b) the mass proliferation of programming language syntax
through web and multimedia scripting languages and search engines. For the
reader of mez's "netwurks", it remains all the more an open question
whether the "mezangelle" para-code of parentheses and wildcard characters
only mimics programming languages or is, at least partially, the product of
programmed text filtering."

[in Cream 1: Collaborative Research into Electronic Art Memes]"
-Florian Cramer, lecturer in Comparative Literature at Freie
Universität Berlin



"When I first encountered mez's work the association with contemporary
clichés of language didn't even occur to me for quite some time - i saw it
as something else completely. the difference: CONTENT/intent. mez doesn't
play this way with language because of trendi-ness or eaze, but with
deliberate intent/choice. [this] FORM as integral to her content, and as
[a] form of communication which is distinguished by her particular
content/treatment/meaning ... also, it doesn't read with the eaze that
phonetic treatment of language usually duz - in youth filled chat rooms for
instance - one  has to dig a bit, step back and read with conscious
intent/concentration if one's is to actually gather what's being said,
which brings a new attention to reading, akin to that which we bring to
Shakespeare, etc." 

-Claire Dinsmore, Cauldron & The Net



"...during a period of time from approximately 1995 to 1997 interface as a
concern was investigated in earnest, and in some cases brilliantly realized
by a very few of the original net.artists (Bunting, JODI, MEZ,
Lialina)...Mez is without doubt one of the most consistent, prolific,
innovative artists working new media today. Mez's work with language has
had a considerable effect on the language of many..."

-Ted Warnell, warnell.com




"...Mez reaches into the very structure of the word, creating an entire
para-language, called "m[ez]ang.elle," which is readable by readers of
English, but only at the cost of a dramatically slowed reading speed. She
organizes textual performances which she designates as e-mail trawling,
hacker attacking, open source kode poetri, or electronic channeling. Though
this work uses many of the devices of so-called L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry,
fluid spacing, bracketing, and ambiguous punctuation to obtain a
simultaneity of reference that tests fixed neuronal patterns, it also tests
these, simultaneously,through choreographed and random kinetic oscillations
of the Web environment, re-converting the process of reading to a process
of action, perhaps somewhat akin to what oral cultures undertook when print
first spread through them."

-Stephanie Strickland, from "Dali Clocks: TIME DIMENSIONS OF HYPERMEDIA",
at Digital Arts and Culture Conference, Norway 00.



"... i dont know how others find it, but i do tons of programming and
[mez's] style is just the most delightful play on coding.  I kinda think of
her as a cross between James Joyce and Larry Wall - author of the Perl
programming language and a linguist by training....."
- les schaffer


"Mez's mezangelle language, conceived in cyberspace, is now being noticed
globally - even the traditional print based poetry community is becoming
aware of mezangelle as a new literary device, and if not new, certainly an
extension of the last big phenomenon of poetry, parataxis within lines of
poetry as characterised by the work of the language poets in the 1970s and
1980s and which now permeates to mainstream poetry.
mez's parataxis of syllable and letter, within words themselves, sets up a
poetic experience where the words clash, their internal workings in
opposition, disrupting the way we read as language and forcing a closer
examination of the text, creating new meanings with the text.
equally important as the mezangelle language has been the method of
collection of the texts, the method of generation of the texts, the
collaborative aspect of the work. this is inseparable from the work, and
totally exposed out there, poetry in the act of being made - the process
becomes equally as important as the product."

-komninos zervos,  Lecturer in poetry and cyber
studies, Griffith University.


"This is a deliberate utilization of  space and typography. Think of it as
the inverse of your rejection of caps, quotes, and etc., the iconography of
the normal."

-George Trail


*********************





 
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  	net.wurker][mez][
 .antithetical..n.struments..go.here. 
	      xXXx             
              ./.               
    www.hotkey.net.au/~netwurker
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