While studying instances of customization and the way that people make their objects they’re own, I began to see examples of what I call “inadvertent customization”. I saw instances where people had mindlessly picked, peeled, or torn the surface of something. Most times this occurred in a place of extended waiting. I started to think about the idea of a waiting room. This is a room that exists just for the purpose of waiting. Waiting rooms are a sort of purgatory between heaven and hell. Heaven being outside and hell being whatever stressful situation that you are about to walk into. (Doctor, interview, business meeting etc.) This is a time of deep contemplation and there is always a certain amount of anxiety involved. Wouldn’t it be nice if we were able to use that time to decompress or turn our brains off and forget about those stressful situations?

Peeling is a mindless, but strangely satisfying act that allows this decompression to happen. One of these table surfaces is covered in layer upon layer of post-consumer, adhesive-backed, vinyl window advertisements. These advertisements that demand our attention and clutter our already over-stimulated lives are deconstructed in a way that they become a more worthwhile distraction. While in purgatory, visitors can peel layers from one surface and re-apply them where they want. The tables can be separated and used as end tables In doing so they uncover new layers, they create they’re own compositions and achieve a feeling of mindless satisfaction. The result is a unique surface that’s design is placed literally, in the nervous hands of many anonymous and unsuspecting collaborators.