Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art: Nervous Dental Patient
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The Nervous Dental Patient
The creative folks at Spontaneous Art asked me to help create an interactive art piece for the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. The idea was to create a game in which people had to extract candy from a large mouth with braces. The player had to use a pair of tongs to carefully dislodge candy from the braces without touching the tongs to the braces. If the player did touch the braces, they would hear a loud squeel from the mini amplifier hooked up to the circuit and the player’s turn is over.
My job was to create the circuit. I decided to use a circuit similar to my LTX Theremin. To make the circuit act like the ‘Operation’ game, I snipped the negative battery lead and connected one end to the braces and the other end to the tongs. If the tongs touch the braces, the circuit is complete and the sound is heard.
The game came together beautifully. It was great to work with such talented people and to see an idea evolve into a success.
Created and performed by Natalie Berry, Dan Blades, Melissa Dettloff, Emilia Javanica, Chris Sandon, & Trevor Stone.
Video edited by Trevor Stone