The Sweetshop of Words started life as a wearable counter of conceptual confectionary which was fun and surreal, if a little precarious! It has now been developed into a fully fledged interactive installation and on a light hearted level is a nostalgic reminder of the agonizing choice we had as children when we couldn’t decide what to spend our pocket money on – lots of little sweets or buy one big thing like a chocolate bar? On a deeper level it raises the philosophical question of choice – what ultimately in life are we able to choose? Voltaire said that “The most important choice you can make is to be in a good mood ” and the Sweetshop of Word aims to help people to do this!
The installation has the feel of a fairground stall with the excitement that each person goes away with a ‘prize’ so to speak. Of more value perhaps however is that each sweet that they choose comes with its own quirky, philosophical inner layer of meaning and the public ‘unwrap’ this depending on their choice. What they choose thus becomes integral not only to their own individual interaction but to the overall feeling of the piece as a whole.
The installation also invites visitors to create their own sweet wrapper for sweets that fill the PinARTa. The finale of the installation is a performance of the PinARTa bashing to which everybody is invited. The sweets that fall are shared out amongst the public and if they so wish, the wrappers are used to create a new work of art that can subsequently be displayed in the Sweetshop of Words gallery.
Finally , there is also the option of a gig by the Sweetshop of Words house band featuring ‘ Sweet Serenades ‘ (described as “re–inventing the British Chanson” by Edinburgh Guide).