Mary-anne Breeze, better known as Mez, lives and works in Australia. She
first got into a larger net.art picture in 1997, via the net.art
mailinglist 7-11. Her work is highly 'textual', but expands also to
sound. Considering the relationship between concrete poetry and music or
sound this probably should come as no surprise. She likes to change her
name a lot (mz post modemism, mezchine, ms Tech.no.whore, flesque, e-
mauler, and mezflesque.exe), and maybe because of this, plus the nature
of her work, she has a less clearly demarcated position then some other
net.artists. This relative 'instability', compared to some highly
compact web artworks, is one of the attractive sides of her work for me.
+ + +
JB: How would you describe the kind of net art you make?
Mez: Hard question this one, basically because of the immediate
temptation to launch into my trademark writing style/language; that is
to 'mezangelle'. This style of writing/textual construction [that has at
its base email dialogues and network exchanges] underpins all my
net.artwork, even the more image intensive versions. The format evolved
from a series of emailed collaborative pieces carried out with m@ [Matt
Hoessli from the CADRE Institute] on the 7-11 mailing list from '96
onwards. At the time, I was into switching avatarian cloaks [the most
regular being 'ms post modemism'] which is another defining criteria of
my net.artwork. My particular 'angle' was to take the information text
tracts m@ would post and 'mangle' them through free/multi-word
associative techniques and repost them - hence the term, mezangelle.
This technique has developed since, with computer code conventions and
regular chat/email iconographs contributing to its formulation.
If I were to answer the above question in my 'mezangelle' style:
+ + +
::N 1 Word: mezangelled
::N 1 Sentence: the con[nned]flagration B-tween m-mage N text[ual]/sound N
fr[ott]ag[e].mentation ov breath/lec.tron.ics N flesh
::In Many Wordz: Eye make sever.all versionz of [intra]net[worked].art,
each 1 par.tic[k].ular 2 mi conceptual n-tent m-bedded within you.knitz/
phone.tick-tock snippettes
