Ben Duvall’s Buffalo utilizes the formulaic visual language of computer coding as a poetic trope. Planned onto massive, rectangular pages, his text trickles down in sharp diagonals, isolated arrays or backwards marches– each formatting change enriching the effort to decode and comprehend the phrases chosen. Duvall’s stylistic sensibility creates a caricature of both shape-poetry and spatial coding; Buffalo cheekily refers to both conventions, while ultimately insisting on its uniqueness as a text-object, bound in flat, brown cardstock, with the title and author's’ name printed in simple black stencils. The book’s physical formatting evokes a relationship to manuscripts or other devised blueprints of a system of function or dysfunction.

In his web and print-based practices, Ben Duvall distorts contemporary placement of word and image, making each less legible by championing the convergence of the two as one, fluctuating method of communication.

Author: Ben Duvall
Year: 2017
Pages: 18
Dimensions: 38.5 x 28 cm
Cover: Softcover
Process: Risograph
Edition: 75
Language: English