What’s the message?

Oni Buchannan’s work echoes the cut up method of Byron Gysin. The cut up method, a form of oulipo is nothing new in the world of literature. In fact, Buchanan often uses oulipo in her poetry. She has written many poems in prisoner’s constraint and text message language. Oulipo is important to Buchannan’s work because the very style in which the poetry was written determines where it ends up. However, her innovation to the old method is in the flash animation she uses to make the cut up letters come to life and float down the page. This allows the reader to see the actual process, not just the result of the process. By ditching the scissors and electronically cutting up the words, Buchannan creates a new medium of work. The animation becomes a part of the poetry, a conveying a message stronger than the words themselves.

Marshall McLuhan asserts in his article “The Medium is the Message” that the medium is what is important in creating a relationship with the audience. He argues that it is not the content, but the mode of writing that is the essential to communication to the reader.  In this article, he mentions cubism as an example of how the medium shapes the message.  The new medium, a painting broken up and reassembled, gives the painting multiple layers of meaning.

The message of  cubism as a new medium was to  abandon the traditional single perspective way of thinking and understanding.  Similarly,  kinetic poetry, the medium used by Oni Buchannan in writing “The Mandrake Vehicles”  breaks existing boundaries adds a new aspect to the work that  allows the reader to interpret more from the poetry. The animation is a type of image shapes the way we interpret the content. Like McLuhan argues, the content is not the main message I take away from “The Mandrake Vehicles”. The message lifted from this medium is similar to that of cubism, it gives us more than one perspective of the work as a whole, the animation gives new meaning to the words.

Picasso, the creator of cubism, recognized his work as not only a conveyor of message, but as a language. He essentially combined paint, canvass, and cut up images and even some words to create a new language that speaks to us as the audience in a way that has not been achieved by any other artist. Check out this slide show that illuminates Picasso’s innovative language. Similarly, Cathy Park Hong’s poetry creates a new language from Spanish, English,Korean, and even made up words. Through her new language, her medium of amalgamation, Hong sends a message of global peace and understanding. So how does this relate to Oni Buchannan and “The Mandrake Vehicles”?

In Kress’ “Reading Images”, he says that images contain meanings equivalent to words, and in some instances are more important than the words themselves. Just ask Picasso. He and Kress seem to be on the same page. So if images can be considered a form of communication, then animation can also be used to convey messages.Oni Buchannan’s unique mixture of text, the cut up method, and flash animation creates a language that actually echoes the language of the internet itself. The internet as a technology has emerged as a language, by conveying messages by mixing images, videos, and text . The fact that this poetry is interactive and multi-layered is the message Buchannan’s aiming to send. The title to Carr’s article poses the question “Is Google Making us Stupid?” To that, I say no. It is making us innovative. Yes, the way we read has changed, but the internet (and Oni Buchannan’s poetry) allows us to make the most of our new multi-layered and interactive world.

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