Shane Hinton is a writer and podcaster often located at firstwallrebate.com.

Shane + i 1st crossed paths in 2008 thru com[o]ment[um] streams on First Wall Rebate [a podcast he runs with Trevor Dodge and Shawn Rider]. we r both fervent gamers + quickly bonded: i only later_learnt of his febrile_txts>evocative xpression[s] that flash + surprise_strike with[in] seductive configurations. in october 2009, Shane inquired if i would become his writing mentor: i declined [i don't do mentorship in the strict sense of the term] but offered 2 collaborate with him instead. Shane [wholeheartedly] agreed + we began constructing a set of _Transformational [net]Wurks_, 1 = _:terror(aw)ed patches:_. while co-creating these wavelet_stitchings, i concretely realised shane's innovative depth + breadth + broadening_expressive_abilities.

Mez has helped me begin to understand the ways that digital technologies have digested and reassembled communication. Her critical work has shaped my own analytical explorations of digital environments, interactive narrative, and virtual identities. Her artistic work with mezangelle has forced me to reevaluate my perceptions of syntax and its relationship to the navigational language of the internet. I am consistently awed by the ways that Mez is able to expose the unseen wiring in the assumptions beneath interactive spaces.

Both artistically and critically, Mez has inspired in me a desire to strip open language in order to read fortunes in its innards like tea leaves. Because of her influence, I am attempting to approach narrative in a way that does not flow from front to back but rather weaves new patterns that incorporate external sources and layers of progression. Mez has taught me that the future does not approximate the past but instead reshapes our understanding of it, that new methods of interpretation inject new meanings into rigid cultural texts.