As a special education teacher for over 30 years, Dobbin has established repetition and symbols as a way of survival for his students. Remember learning your multiplication tables? We often repeat things several times before they commit to our memory. This philosophy, repetition is the “Mother of all Learning” has informed Dobbin’s aesthetic. Use of the same subject in various mediums all becomes a reflection of our memory, of a mass produced culture, and the human need for order. Hostage and An Awful Noise speak to repetition “as occurring in series or in linear succession; repetition in time, bridging the past and the present, and repetition in space; repetition of the ever (slightly) different.” (The Deleuze Dictionary) Nietzsche said repetition is the “concept of the eternal return, as the power of beginning, and beginning again”. There is comfort in the knowing.