There are dentists, and then there are dentists who dare to ask the big questions: How can I make a blowjob better? Kuang-Yi Ku, who ditched the toothy profession for life as an artist, is the first to create dental prostheses designed to increase pleasure for the male oral sex aficionado. By gaming the body’s stimulation system with history’s naughtiest retainer, he proves that the limits of human pleasure are far from being reached.
The Fellatio Modification Project, part of a new exhibition in London’s Science Gallery, is the Taiwanese artist’s attempt to cast the dental profession in a different light: Though oral experts often deal with issues of aesthetics, pronunciation and mastication, he insists there’s a sensual side to their expertise. “There is another function, sex, which is never mentioned in the textbooks,” Ku said in an interview with New Scientist. The mouth, after all, is an orifice like any other, and dentists, Ku points out, are particularly well equipped to modify them.
Dentists change the insides of a mouth every day through braces, elastics, mouth guards, and the like. In the first part of his project, entitled “the Male Masturbation Cup Mouth,” Ku outfits retainers with “bulges and bilges” along the roof of the mouth and beneath the tongue to better trigger orgasms. Taking inspiration from existing male masturbation aids, he explains that modifying the surface of the oral mucosa — that is, the naturally wet parts of the mouth — will enhance pleasure during repeated contact. “During oral sex, the back and forth contacts with the raised surface would enhance the physical pleasure,” he writes on his website.
Ku’s focus on embossing has a biological basis. When we feel things via our sense of touch, what’s really happening is a stimulus — in this case, the warm, retainer-slick interior of a mouth — is sending information brainward via the skin’s sensory neurons. The brain then processes that information as pleasure or pain, depending on the stimulus and the emotional state you’re in. Repeated exposure to the same stimulus, however, can get old: For the same reasons that pleasurable fellatio requires more than just static, consistent pressure on the genitals, a diverse oral landscape replete with insistent hills and gaping caverns makes for infinitely better sex than a sleek-but-boring mouth-hole. In short, effective stimuli are varied stimuli.
Of course, as anyone whose genitalia have encountered an overeager biter knows, too much stimuli — or the wrong kind — can spell disaster. Ku’s mouthpiece appears to fit perfectly over the teeth but also smooths over their ridges, perhaps in order to avoid unwanted snags. While his current models of the male masturbation cup are made of dental reline — a type of plastic also used for dentures — later stages of his work will incorporate engineered human tissue for that true-to-life sensation.
Ku’s project is part of Science Gallery’s larger exhibition Mouthy: Into the Orifice, and he’s hoping to start a conversation about the intersection between technology and the “absolute pursuit of physical pleasure,” especially within the gay community, and gauging just how far we’re willing to change ourselves to maximize pleasure. For example, the other part of his Fellatio Modification Project, entitled the “Bird Beak Clone,” proposes oral cavity-lengthening surgery to make more room for incoming genitalia — and simultaneously proves that dental science doesn’t have to suck.
