Creating a Scene

Much of dentistry is performed in a boring office space, usually accompanied by rooms with no windows and a dull choice of color for wall-paint. In most cases however, dental offices will compensate and try to balance that simple atmosphere with either enticing portraits or visually-appealing landscape photos hung peculiarly at eye-level to the patient. Dentists and their associates alike, want their patients to feel at ease, welcomed, and to know that they are in a safe and pleasant environment.

I want to take this concept a step further and appeal to the more the kid-friendly side of dentistry known as pedodontics or pediatric dentistry and create a fun, cheerful, and upbeat environment. When the audience observes my finished project, I want them to feel delighted and joyful. I want them to get a sense of compassion coming from the dentist himself and know that candy in general isn't the taboo of dentistry or anything along the lines of that idea.

For this project, I bought two 2 pound bags of Sour Patch Kids and a lot of floss. I'm also using one of my classmate's leftover pipes as a foundation to hang the floss to and project my floss of candy through. I think that the material I'm using is closely associated to the idea that I'm trying to portray for several reasons: it utilizes many colors that one would identify as child-friendly, it reinforces the usage of proper dental care - something most of us skip out on such as flossing, all the while it is also propagandizing a different perspective of dentistry.

I think that for this project to be executed well, I need to carefully select the material and be able to set a scenery that people can relate to by tapping into their past and bringing back a bit of nostalgia from their own childhood. Going back to the materials being used, I think that each component is necessary to connect the message across because while the concept is pretty obvious, it'll take a little bit of thinking to bridge the connection - which is what I want this piece to induce. Essentially, I want to viewer to think about dentistry, why they may or may not have have, and form a new ideology of dentistry by using my installation as the link between the old and new conception of dentistry.

Floss as the foundation

Sour Patch Kids to promote the kid-friendly atmosphere

Pipes to anchor the floss to and manipulate the setting

This project will be my attempt at a string installation. I want to capture a very delightful scenery but also promote dentistry as my inspiration for this project. Currently, I have bought all my materials needed for the project and plan to start working tomorrow. I'm going to floss together a lot of Sour Patch Kids while still deciding on how I want the strings of floss to be placed in the gallery considering how much space I've allotted.

I want to be careful and use up as much space as I need because if I make the installation to small, it'll look confined, just like a dentist office - the opposite of what I originally planned for.