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The applicant has a lot he wants to say... “Water tricks” entailed hiding water spouts in courtly gardens—in the ground, in bushes, in statues—for the purpose of dousing unsuspecting garden-goers. Of course, given the prevalence of this practice during its flourishing, the visitors must have let themselves be unsuspecting, naive, to some degree, like children do as they leave childhood. The applicant’s proposal would be more compelling were he to discuss and not merely mention water tricks. He posits them as a technical and social predecessor to the installations that his proposed lab would yield, but he does not play with the resonance between them and his own characterization of the joke as an instance of something hidden bursting out fluidly. Not to mention the fact (which I already mentioned) that many struck by water tricks would have been giddily aware that they were walking into an ambush, much like a listener into a joke, a crowd into a comedy.
