Phoebe Meldrum @s3602428-blog - Tumblr Blog

I chose a stereotypical waiting room chair. I was very happy with this chair because I thought it was perfect. It was made of wood and vinyl which was very tacky, and is the shape of how I see a waiting room chair being. The arms of the chair were very important as when I was researching all I saw were pictures of chairs with arms on them.

I had to do quite a few coats of paint to make the chair perfectly white. It was hard going from one colour to the opposite, but I got there after doing maybe 3 coats. I was glad I picked the paint that I did because it stuck to plastic, which was important for painting the vinyl.

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I also bought some kids toys that are going to go in the waiting room. This is something else that you usually see in waiting rooms, particularly in doctor’s offices.

I originally painted them with white acrylic paint, however after this video I went back over them with white spray paint. I found the spray paint was more consistent and much faster to use.

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I wanted to include a potted plant in the furniture as it’s a very common item in waiting rooms. I found this plastic plant at the Reject Shop that I can paint. It’s the largest I could find so I won’t be able to sit it on the floor like I thought I would. I’ll have to put it on a table.

Painting the flowers was quite difficult as there was so much detail, and after I painted them they became quite heavy and had trouble staying up straight. I might tie the stalks together so they stay up.

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I bought three different spray paints that I could use to paint my furniture. I wanted to do a shade rather than a colour because I felt that this really created a mood of ambiguity, and a colour would make it much too bright and exciting.

I chose matte spray paints because I wanted the furniture to look as bland as possible so I thought this would be more effective. I picked black, white, and I also bought a silver, metallic one. I wanted to try swatching this because it looked very industrial which might work.

However after swatching, I decided that white would be the best. The walls in the area the furniture will be in will be white, so it will almost blend into the wall. I definitely don’t want to use black as it’s quite bold which defeats the purpose of my theme.

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I made the clock ticking 2 minutes long so I could stretch out the other noises a little bit. This is so when you listen, you can be waiting a while for something else to happen.

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I want to have something to accompany the soundtrack. Something that could work really well is recreating the waiting room and treating it as an installation piece, where the viewer is able to sit down and listen to the audio and have the full “waiting room” experience around them as well.

Of course, my space is limited so I will probably have to limit myself to having one chair, and maybe a table where I can put magazines or something. A table would really work as I’d also be able to place the headphones on the table for easy access to it.

As such, the room the artwork is presented in becomes a waiting room in itself.

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I took the sound of a clock ticking and played it for a few different people. They noted that it made them feel slightly anxious, which really works for my project.

This track goes for one minute so I’m going to repeat it in Audacity to make it go for longer. This will allow me to space out other sounds more, such as people walking past and people coughing.

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Clocks

Clocks are a key motif of representing time passing. They are constantly present in waiting rooms and are an indicator of how long you have been waiting, and how long you potentially have left to wait.

The sound of a clock ticking can potentially trigger anxiety, as a reminder of how time continues to pass while you sit idly waiting. This brings up ideas of playing with the comfort levels of the viewer, choosing subtle noises that could make them anxious to move on.

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To support the audio element, I want to create something physical to emphasize the atmosphere of the waiting room. I feel like creating something too abstract would not help to convey the location I want.

One idea I’ve had is to recreate the waiting room with furniture. Obviously I won’t have a lot of space to work with when I present it, but I could possibly confine it to one chair, with some basic decorations/kids toys/magazines to help back up the representation. It would also be nice to have a chair there as the viewer would be able to sit down and experience a waiting room in its entirety. They could put the headphones on, sit back, and have the waiting room recreated around them. With no specific mention of what the waiting room is for, it is left up to the viewer - they could be waiting for anything, or nothing.

They could also believe that something further is going to happen in the audio track, but find that it never happens, and they have been waiting for nothing the entire time.

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Time-based element

To explore my time-based element I think I would like to do sound. I haven’t worked with sound before so I think this would be an appropriate way to challenge myself (as opposed to doing something like photography, which I do on a regular basis).

Pictured below is a small brainstorm of the sounds present in a waiting room - specifically, the waiting room at the doctor’s office near my house. I waited in there for a long time and recorded all the sounds I could hear. The most dominant thing I noticed was the complete silence, occasionally broken by a small sound. This sound was amplified by the lack of visual and audial stimulation in the room.

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The waiting room of a doctor’s office

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The Waiting Room 1959 George Tooker

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The Waiting Room is a kind of purgatory - people just waiting - waiting to wait. It is not living. It is a matter of waiting - not being one’s self. Not enjoying life, not being happy, waiting, always waiting for something that might be better - which never comes. Why can’t they just enjoy the moment?

G Tooker, George Tooker, 1985

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Location - A Waiting Room

I have chosen to focus on the location of a waiting room for my project.

I find that waiting rooms are almost separate from the rest of everyday life. It is a room dedicated to waiting for the next stage. The mundanity that this room presents suggests it is almost devoid of life - the quietness, the lack of culture and social interaction.

For my project I hope to find a way to represent the stillness of this room.

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