#david knoebel

[nerowolfsden-blog]

"Thoughts Go"

This poem left my thinking on the word play it utilizes and the images it generates. I followed the professor's suggestion on how to interact with the poem and i can only say it is really interesting what D. Knoebel is trying to do here with this poem. When I finally read them both simultaneously the second time I couldn't help myself on thinking and making the connection of these brief thoughts with the wedge of geese that you visualize from the stanza disappearing over the trees, like thoughts that come and goes. It is like you notice them but at the same time your not sure if what you saw was really what you think you saw.

[abnormalarmy]

A Fine View...until gravity kicks in.

David Knoebel’s VRML poems offer a very odd yet innovative way of presenting poetic works through the use of 3D modeling and imagery. “Euclid”, for example, uses the model of a three dimensional cube to create a poetic image using both animation and user exploration to captivate the readers’ interest and then allow them to interpret the poem through interaction and motion. “Walkdont” limits animation and interactivity but adds sound effects to enhance the users’ experience with the work. Though I attempted to decipher what both these poems were about I fell short as my computer screen was not up to the task and I only perceived bits and pieces of both.

“A Fine View” however was clear and no less appealing than the other two poems. Through animation the author takes the readers through a small incident that ends in a sad outcome as it slowly acts out the accidental fall of one of the roofers as they sat around during their break time before returning to their labor. The animation begins slowly, the words barely visible as one line slowly becomes legible and you begin to get a sense of what is occurring. As the poem progresses and the accidental fall is mentioned the animation speeds up, mimicking the sensation of falling as the sentences fly by quicker and quicker until a large object is seen in the horizon. As the poem finally ends the users receive a more visual image of what poor Bill also saw as he finally landed face first on the basement slab. Knoebel’s use of these different spaces is quite imaginative and demonstrates the new tools that artists have to bring their work to life and how they can offer quite a “fine view” of their art to anyone with a computer and some free time.

[rickypadilla-blog]

Adding meaning through movement

David Knoebel's poetry embraces some interesting signifying strategies seen in other e-works. In his poems, similar to visual poetry, words aren't simply anlyzed by their denotation or even their connotation but one must also apply the knowledge of these two terms to the movement of the words. The words in his work are unintellible at certain angles so the reader must try and discover why and how to read them. The poems movement involves because the reader must move with it. Not only is movement something that must be appreciated but also all that movement entails. The words don't simply move up and down or left to right as on a 2d plane. The words are 3d models that are programmed to move through a 3d space meaning that distance can become a more prominent signifying element.

"Walkdont" is one of Knoebel's 3d poems that empahsizes movement on a 3d plane. Some words are always legible because the word never gives its back to the user, like "walk" and "don't walk." other words freeze at point while some change their movement behavior; such as "who knew?" which moves around the central helix during "don't walk" yet remains flipping in the same spot "during walk. Because these words are in a 3d space the concept of walkin can be more clearly imagined because the words spin around a helix. The poem develops as a game of "red light green light" where the user can tell the words what to do by passing the mouse over a black circle. The helix can be read as "you turning toward moment this" yet makes more sense if read from the bottom to the top which  reads "this moment turning toward you." If the moment is directed at the user then the user is empowered because the work has centered its focus on the user.

Yet the user doesn't have absolute control over all the words. When the user changes the word "don't walk" from red to the green word "walk" the only phrase "walking around" is the "who knew?" This is the most interesting point of the work and points at all the potential that e-poetry has. The words behave and have character because they have been brought to life in this electronic environment. "Who knew" that words could so blatantly disobey us? Knoebel brings up interesting questions about language and the written word. Just how much control do we have over our words?