Continuing Deluge

Abstract

> I once knew a man who invented his own language. He would give directions to strangers in a fictional tongue, relentlessly waving his arms and pointing as he ranted. He wore a fur coat that hung to his ankles, but only on the hottest days of summer. I remember a time when he carried around a very large papier mâche rat that he had found. For a week or more he paraded up and down the street with this giant dead rodent over one shoulder and a baseball bat over the other, shouting, “I finally got that son of a bitch; I finally got him.” He could be heard in the bank asking for a withdrawal of fifty thousand nickels. His car was equipped with a series of mirrors placed on the front seat and the dashboard, which allowed him to drive down the street using the mirrors as a visual guide, giving the appearance of a car moving along without a driver. He called himself and everyone else Doctor Wobble Dobble. The man was my neighbor and a daily presence in my childhood. His influence had a profound impact on my becoming an artist. > > —John Knecht, program notes on The Wobble Dobble Series in Six Parts (2000) Media artist John Knecht's work, and particularly his recent projects, made for flat-screen gallery installation and digital projection, has been finding an expanding audience on Facebook, as well as in galleries and on …