In/using one word, I’d describe the kind of net.artwork I make as
‘mezangelled’. In/using one sentence, I’d describe it as a conflagration
between image, text and sound + a fragmentation [allusion of
frottage as well here] of breath, electronics and flesh. Extended, the
description would be that I make several versions of networked art,
each one particular to my conceptual intent, which is imbedded
within units/phonetic snippets [hence, the audience/‘you’ actively
knit the units/connections together]. The labels and categories that
are applied [or ‘word shrink-wrapped’] to my artwork/stuff always
seem somehow inadequate.(Breeze 2001)See also mez’s _][ad][Dressed in a Skin C.ode _ (Breeze republished) on
The Writing Experiment website which includes mezangelle and email text
in an actual digital work. Experiments with codework can also be found in
the work of Talan Memmott (2000).
In order to incorporate code into your texts (Exercise 4), find ways of
making email or other web-based texts/exchanges the basis for creative
texts. Write some web-based texts which mix normal and code-based
language. Incorporate some of the html code that you are using in making
the piece into the text, or alternatively incorporate aspects of code whether
or not they are relevant to the piece. Use this as a way of considering the
effects of computerisation on contemporary culture.
HYPERMEDIA HAPPENINGS
Cyberwriting is a very rich medium, but can be even more exciting if it is
combined with image and sound. Digital technologies make sound, image
and word available within the same space—the domain of the computer.
Digital work which combines different media is usually called hypermedia or
multimedia work. An important consideration in bringing word, sound and
text together in cyberspace is negotiating the relationships between them.
As we have already seen in Chapter 10, one of the interests of using dif-
ferent media is exploring how they can interact with, and modify, each other.
This interplay between the verbal, visual and sonic is a very important
feature of many new media works. For example, in Brian Kim Stefans’s The
Dreamlife of Letters there is constant dialogue between the meanings of the
words and the visual designs they are creating. Sometimes the words behave
iconically: that is, they visually act out their meanings—the word ‘ink’ makes
an ink-like blur on the screen. Sometimes the movements of the words, as
New media travels 249