"Mez Breeze embraces the medium of digital writing, producing highly original work with striking visual force. We were impressed by the diversity of her creative practice and her willingness to present daring writing in an accessible way. We think that writers like Mez are redefining contemporary poetry." - Judges for the 2015 Thiel Grant Award for Online Writing.

[On"Human Readable Messages"] "[A] classic...A sea of linguistic invention: unsurpassed technical innovation in terms of print language. Reading the various passages for the first time I felt I was privy to a new form of expression not merely a creole or amalgam, something really new. Mez is brilliant." - Michael J. Maguire

"Code Poetry often refers to work such as Mez Breeze’s. Her Mezangelle complicates the line between human and machine communication in a way informed more from a literary tradition than code art’s contemporary art perspective. The broken, code-like assemblages of words layer meanings, but unlike in code art, it’s not important for the resulting piece to function as executable code. Code poetry is a creole between machine and human communication." - Daniel Temkin, "Esoteric.codes"

"This notion of source code as readable - as creating some outcome regardless of its machinic execution - underlies "codework" and other creative projects. The Internet artist Mez, for instance, has created a language called mezangelle that incorporates formal code and informal speech. Mez's poetry deliberately plays with programming syntax, producing language that cannot be executed, but nonetheless draws on the conventions of programming language to signify." - Wendy Chun, "Programmed Visions: Software and Memory".

I've never encountered any1 w the unique joy&delight in [s]language[s] as @netwurker @MezBreezeDesign #liquidpage #wordstorm14 #elit
— Mark C. Marino (@markcmarino) May 30, 2014

"I cannot help but to think of Netwurker Mez, whose primary coding language, Mezangelle, is used to create code-poetry that typically does not compile. The plethora of literary techniques invoked in Mezangelle make her work particularly accessible to people whose backgrounds tend to be less on the programming side of CCS. I like to think of her coding practices as closely related to obfuscation, though more in the literary sense than functional sense, if you subscribe to that dichotomy.

For non-coders who are intimidated by the second C in CCS, or anyone unfamiliar with Mez's work, I suggest testing the waters with some examples of interpretive readings that have been performed on Mez's code-poetry. Rita Raley has performed a very insightful reading on Mez's work. Another interesting reading of Mezangelle...can be found here."

-Max Feinstein, HASTACH Code Critiques CCS Forum

--
Alan Maizey: Mez’ artworks are a nice combination of aesthetics and purposeful elements. One work that was interesting for me was the collection of horizontally scrolling pieces that collectively form a portfolio of her interpretations of the interaction between poetry and design.

Although these works appeal to the participant who has experience within the web coding field, they also appeal to an audience who are drawn in simply by the smooth, relaxing flow of the artworks. It is this multi level sense of interest that Mez has laced successfully into her work that gives the impression that she has the ability as an artist to attract audiences from starkly varying backgrounds.

As a collection of pieces, the portfolio that harbours the many scrolling works represents two contrasting perspectives. On one hand the jumbled letters mean nothing to the untrained eye, perhaps instilling a feeling of being lost in a world of technological confusion that has no visible end or completion. On the other hand, this perspective is enhanced from the viewpoint of a participant who has the ability to decipher the poems that have been entwined throughout the mix-up of letters and symbols. Although still representing a ‘lost in technology’ feel, this second perspective of Mez’ work combines the chaos of technology (which is dependant entirely on algorithms and codes) with the emotion of poetry.

I enjoyed becoming lost in Mez’ artworks, I felt that the entire time I was perusing through the pages that there was always going to be something that I had missed in some way. This feeling of nervous anticipation added to the experience of navigating through, at the end of the day, is a relatively standard website.

--
Jason Jie: Week 9 – Interactive confusing coding

Wow, that was what I was thinking when reading this. I guess this kind of tries to use psychology and mixing it with technology? In a way, human brains created computer programming. Therefore, it would make sense that the coding we use for coding is a reflection of how we think that the human brain works..? That also might be the reason why it sometimes seems so similar to how we think and act. In certain culture theories, there are claims that culture is also a way of programming. Interactive coding may be seen as a certain coding too. Maybe even know some cultural influences too…

I am not sure how this technology is going to develop itself in the future. Maybe the future of androids and robocops isn’t that far at all…? If we can use interactive coding that can direct computers/humans to walk a certain pattern, then it shouldn’t take that long before we will be in the same dimension movies like ‘Bladerunner’ are portraying… Only time can tell…

--
Rei Singsam: Hi Peepz,

“Exorcism” MEZ (Mary Anne Breeze)

The artwork reminded me of a movie I saw during my first year of university. The movie is entitled “Existenze” and features themes of biocybernetics. This piece features various body parts and organs displayed on what it seems like a conveyor belt and is displayed to be a type of interface where the user can custom make a human body with their selection of different body parts.

In saying that, it also features a “Matrix” style aesthetic, with a lot of alien type of text placed all around her art. Some of these text titles are links to other artworks, and other titles are in a different language deeming it incomprehensible.

Additionally, Breeze uses themes of ‘hieroglyphic’ type icons. Many of her diagrams featured in this piece, appear as it they were painted on ancient Egyptian walls. The combination of all these elements creates a degree of confusion to what actually she is trying to portray in her artwork and indeed evokes a dark and eerie mood. Very original to say the least.

--
Chrissy Brown: MEZ – ‘mesangelle’

ur.blather.is.my.concept.meat is the first line I read within MEZ’s site and I can relate to it. Getting around over hearing conversations can really spark creative ideas. This idea of combing code and poetry is really interesting and adds another visual dynamic to text. An attempt to decipher the writings to create meaning is your first approach to MEZ’s work. I believe you engage more in the writings than you normally would with text, as they are ambiguous. This gives the viewer freedom of interpretation and is very beneficial if you are targeting an intelligent market.

Another favorite I found as it brings a smile to my face when reading is:

Woldram_Alpha input = "hi": "Assuming "hi" is a phrase - Input interpretation: Hello. Response: Hello, human." [luv it].

--
Michael Blank: ...Being able to conceptualise a simple modern day task into another language but being able to make that language a digital one and turn it into art is a stroke of genius. Code and mathematics are very difficult languages to understand fully in all its complexities, but the use of simple commands as directions bring a new life to a simple task.

Already, many of you have begun conceptualising other simple tasks into algorithms that would make life easier. I to have done the same, but I’m going to bring another light onto the piece. Don’t we already do this subliminally? We all already have an algorithm in our heads that tell us to put our left foot in front followed by the right and rinse and repeat to walk until we have found where we want to go. We also have one that tells us where we want to go, and where I should turn to get there.

I love this notion that Mez has brought out the subliminal side of our conscious for all to view and understand in a language that all can interpret. This is Digital Art at its best.

-From the Discussion Forums of New Media Art - The Flash 8 Revival

“...common practice - a series of curated events that wants to use an “unpredictable cobbling together of texts, poetry, people, code, language, Wiki, chat, conversations etc” to create new texts...some more about what the event entails:

The reading groups that make up common practice will take place in June and September. You are invited to read, write, tinker with and intervene in the literary and theoretical texts and poetry together with others through the simple-to-use online tools. You can join us in the Reading Room at Arnolfini or online and via Skype (contact: common practice).

common practice references the widespread and increasingly familiar activity of using online tools in everyday to communicate, contact, work, socialise, play, research, be entertained, etc. The practice embodies the curiosity to experience ways in which human and machine skills and abilities perform together.

More importantly, however, common practice also refers to the fact that it is done in common – together with others. Thus it is social space of knowledge materialised through co-labour, codeworking and language.

The first session will open with mez breeze’s mezangelle poems, written in a blend of code and language, and we will be practising a simultaneous reading-writing reworking of these texts to experience their language-code operations during the event.”

-From Open source poetries by Jeroenn.

"In the works of Mez (Maryanne Breeze), she creates works written in what N. Katherine Hayles has called a creole of computer and human languages. Mez, and other codework authors, display the data layer on the presentation layer. One critical response is to point out that as an information system, the presentation layer are the lines of code and the rest of the system is whatever medium is displaying her poem. However, such an approach missed the very complexity of Mez's work. Indeed, Mez's work is often traditional static text that puts users in the role of the processor...

Consider her short codework "_trEm[d]o[lls]r_" published on her site and on the Critical Code Studies blog. It is a program that seems to describe (or self-define) the birth pangs of a new world. The work, written in what appears to be XML, cannot function by itself. It appears to assign a value to a variable named "doll_tre[ru]mor[s]", a Mez-ian (Mezozoic?) portmenteau of doll_tremors and rumors. This particular rumor being defined is called, the fifth world, which calls up images of the Native American belief in a the perfected world coming to replace our current fourth world. This belief appears most readily in the Hopi tribe of North America. A child of this fifth world are "fractures," or put another way, the tremor of the coming world brings with it fractures. The first, post 2 inscription, contains polymers: a user set to "YourDollUserName," a "3rdperson" set to "Your3rdPerson," a location set to "YourSoddenSelf", and a "spikey" set to "YourSpiKeySelf." The user then becomes a molecule name within the fracture, a component of the fracture. These references to dolls and 3rd person seem to evoke the world of avatars. In virtual worlds, users have dolls.

If the first fracture is located in the avatar of the person, in their avatar, the second centers on communication from this person or user. Here the user is defined with "YourPolyannaUserName," and we are in the world of overreaching optimism, in the face of a "msg" or message of "YourPleading" and a "lastword." Combining these two fractures we have a sodden and spikey self pleading and uttering a last word presumably before the coming rupture into the fifth world.

As with many codeworks, the presentation layer appears to be the data and logic layer. However, there is clearly another logic layer that makes these words appear on whatever interface the reader is using. Thus, the presentation layer is a deception, a challenge to the very division of layers, a revelation that hides. At the same time, we are compelled to execute the presented code by tracing out its logic. We must take the place of the compiler with the understanding that the coding structures are also meant to launch allusive subroutines, that part of our brain that is constantly listening for echoes and whispers.

To produce that reading, we have had to execute that poem, at least step through it, acting as the processor...Where traditional poetry establishes identity through I's, Mez has us identify with a system ready to process the user who is not ready for the fifth world, whatever that may bring. At the same time, universal or even mythical realities have been systematized or simulated. There is another layer of data that is missing, supplied by the user presumably. The poem leaves its tremors in a state of potential, waiting to operate in the context of a larger system and waiting for a user to supply the names, pleading, and last words..."

From "Electronic Literature as an Information System", Juan B. Gutierrez/CAVIIAR (Advanced Research Center in Artificial Intelligence), Mark C. Marino (University of Southern California), Pablo Gervás (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), and Laura Borràs Castanyer (Universidad Oberta de Catalunya),

"...what happens if and when texts are produced in which the technical and cultural practices of electronic writing are combined, as in the case of codeworks? Here notions of authorship are problematized, as codeworks are produced by entities or avatars such as Mez, Antiorp, and JODI, which may or may not be machinic, and which blur the boundaries between art and writing, poetic language and computer code."

-Gary Hall in Digitize This Book!

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8166-4870-2

"...The poetics of electronic poetry are found in works such as Alan Sondheim’s “Lip,” Mez’s “pro][tean][.lapsing.txts” and Jake Chapman’s Meatphysics. More generally, these poetics can be described as emissions and spews of ASCII and plaintext messages in the network as the degree zero of electronic poetry. These and similar works – which may be included in typical discussions of electronic poetry under the rubric of “codework” but are never seen as the leading edge – are the best and perhaps only examples of electronic poetry."

-Sandy Baldwin (West Virginia University)
In "Against Digital Poetics" presented at E-poetry 2009.

"...the writing of Mez, an Australian (nee Mary Ann Breeze) who is probably the most prolific -- if that's a word one can use to her peculiar brand of listserv logorrhea -- digital poet out there, plays a large role. Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle fame made a basic play for singularity and collapsing the art/life divide by tacking an extra "e" on the end of the word "the" in all of his written communications - his latest band is called Thee Majesty. Like androgyny, making basic changes to ones way of writing puts one at odds with much of the normal functioning of the world - imagine filling out a job description using "thee" - but also re-places one, existentially, in the premise of one's decision: counter-cultural agency is thereby systematically refreshed. Mez elaborates on this principle exponentially, creating a carnival of artificial modifications out of the "restraint" of working in the ASCII set sans italics, justification or anything you won't see in a low-level terminal:

> [for instance, 1 email I have employed comes with the
> identifier|meznoma of _app][lick.ation][end.age_ which
> unpacks/translates in2 the tag|labels of _appendage_, app
> [abbreviation for application] end, _app.lick.ation_ etc - all
> avataresque names indicating segmented expressive allusions -

Mez's project is engaging partly because of the rich surfaces -- part freed-signifier and part charismatic tsunami - that she creates, but also her choice of venues: she has chosen to produce her work primarily in listservs, hence elevating the mundane commercial avenues of internet communication into an overstuffed, somewhat kitchy commune. She becomes the architect of the public square just by her propensity to embellish every dark corner."

- Brian Kim Stefans reviewing "p0es1s: The Aesthetics of Digital Poetry".

"›Broken code‹-Autoren wie mez (Pseudonym von Mary-Anne Breeze) stellen zumeist klassische Originalgenies dar, die sich als starke Autoren inszenieren und über ihr Werk absolute Kontrolle ausüben. Im Zusammenhang mit der vorliegenden Untersuchung sind aber die ›Algorithmen‹ am interessantesten, also lauffähige Programme, die von einer marginalisierten Autorschaft gekennzeichnet sind und bei denen der Programmierer deutlich in den Hintergrund tritt...

ASCII-Kunst reflektiert schon umfänglich die Bedeutung des Codes in der digitalen Literatur und setzt sich damit mit einem zentralen Charakteristikum netzbasierter Texte auseinander.
Somit können die entsprechenden, elaborierten Arbeiten sehr wohl als Netzliteratur angesehen werden, auch wenn sie die Vernetzung nicht notwendigerweise voraussetzen. Eine der bekanntesten Vertreter der broken codes ist die australische Netzwerk-Künstlerin mez.31 In ihrer Kunst entwickelte sie eine eigene Sprache namens »mezangelle«. Diese vermischt natürliche Sprachen wie Englisch, Slang, Netz-Jargon und phonetische Wortspiele mit der Sprache von Codes, also technischen Protokoll-Codes und Programmiersprachen...[]

...Mez’ Projekte kommen auf den ersten Blick scheinbar als Computerprogramme daher, auf den zweiten Blick entpuppt sich die Poesie aber als funktionsunfähig (›broken‹) und damit als virtuoses Spiel mit Elementen von Codes (vgl. Cayley 2004: 296-300). Florian Cramer hat oft diskutiert, wie solche Texte gelesen und verstanden werden sollten. Dies kann etwa anhand seiner Deutung der Arbeit »_Viro.Logic Condition][ing][ 1.1_« von mez aus dem Jahr 2001 nachvollzogen werden (vgl. Cramer 2009)."

- Dr Florian Hartling in: "Der digitale Autor. Autorschaft im Zeitalter des Internets"
Bielefeld: Transcript 2009.
382 Seiten, ISBN 978-3-8376-1090-1

"netwurker makes me wonder if Derrida predicted text msging and twitter-speak. The post above is so delightfully double (multiply?) coded and self-deconstructing."

-Jonny Gray

"My initial inspiration, despite my overweening obsession with etymology and a rank fascination with the history of words, was in being introduced to the code poetry of Mezangelle and the intrepid explorations of those like Vuk Cosic and Alan Sondheim. As is my habit, I long pondered the very word "code" and explored its variations in language, thus coming to a notion (pirated from Deleuze and Guattari) that I dubbed de/re-coding."

- Dr. Kane X. Faucher
The University of Western Ontario.

"I love writers like ee cummings and Emily Dickinson that push the norm and play with the accepted standards. I’m intrigued by Breeze’s style which appears to push the envelope even farther. The question that logically follows, though, is at what point do we loose the art itself in our attempts to break the mold? Is there some form required to keep within the parameters of art? What separates art from nonart?
...
If nothing else, this challenges me to experiment with incorporating other mediums within my own writing. I also have a tendency to want to use the high vocabulary I work so hard to equip my students with, but this article has challenged me to consider using more vernacular wordings and phrases. Finally, I am challenged to consider poetry to be more than just words on a page."

-prematurely grey

"...codework's aesthetics map to actual coding practices that are nevertheless themselves highly contingent in their ultimate relationship to other layers of symbolic abstractions in a computer. So it is that the one-to-many ethos of high level languages find immediate concrete expression in Mez's, aka Mary-Anne Breeze's, penchant for polysemic wordplay..."

- Matthew G. Kirschenbaum In "Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination"
Jan 2008 MIT Press ISBN:0262113112

"One of this week’s readings is a very strange looking piece by a writer called “Mez”, which utilizes the language and typography of ‘code’ to make its point about the potential differences between online and print forms...Mez’s website contains some examples of her work and details of the language she calls _mezangelle_ and which contains elements of email code, HTML and other more sophisticated programming languages."

- From: HAM422 - A group blog on creative writing and new media

"A good example of creative misuse of Web 2.0 is this blog/poem by artist Mez...The artist has creatively used the snap link previewer, a new little gizmo that you can install free on your site (the company in return collects data on who links to what etc) to augment the poetry."

-bina-93

"...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