http://interrogative.mit.edu/projects/1993/porte-parole

Krzystoff Wodiczko (Canadian, born Poland, 1943)
Videotape, monitor (mouthpiece, 3 1/4 x 6 1/4 x 7 inches), battery pack and documentation
MSU purchase, funded by the Friends of Kresge Art Museum Endowment, 97.9.A-F

Via: http://artmuseum.msu.edu/exhibitions/online/GiftsofArt_AcquisitionExhibition/1980-AD.html#panel-3
Krysztoff Wodiczko belongs to a genre of public artist who meld art with science and technology. He is a member of MIT’s Interrogative Design Group and is internationally renowned for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments. Since the late 1980s, he has developed a series of nomadic instruments for both homeless and immigrant operators that function as implements for survival, communication, empowerment, and healing.
In 1992, Wodiczko began Xenology: Immigrant Instruments, tools for “the immigrantÕs art of survival.” In the forms of a staff (Alien Staff), wings (Aegis) or a mouthpiece (Mouthpiece), these instruments include small LCD monitors that project an edited videotape of the wearer’s personal history. The series grew from Wodiczko’s own experience as an emigre. Born and trained in Poland under a socialist regime, Wodiczko settled in Canada in 1977, before moving to the U.S. in the 1980s. Created to be performed in urban centers, Xenology: Immigrant Instruments such as Mouthpiece opened dialogues between their operators and passersby, stimulating communication between the immigrant (the speechless stranger) and the native community.

Via: http://rhizome.org/editorial/2010/jan/26/porte-parole-mouthpiece-1996-krzysztof-wodiczko-an/
The Porte-Parole Mouthpiece is an instrument for strangers, its function is to empower those who are deprived of power.

This object encircles the jaw with a small video monitor and loud speakers placed directly over the wearer’s mouth, showing the lips moving in sync to the prerecorded narrative. It is designed to replace the hesitations and fearful silent of an immigrant’s personal voice with a fully formed version of the immmigrant’s story. It function both as a conduit of ones’ voice and image as well as a gag that blocks the mouth and prevents from speaking.

Porte-Parole transforms its user into a virtual subject, literally, a cyborg communicating through a high-tech device rather than your own bodily apparatus for speech. The small size screen drives viewers to come closer to the user face in order to see the image of the moving lips and hear the voice.

Title: Expression Dispatcher (2009)
By: Gerard Rallo
Link: http://www.ideesabsurdes.net/wordpress/?cat=19
On my Flickr: on my Flickr

Concept:
Leave our facial expressivity responsibility (appearance of emotional reactions) in the hands of self-image experts (following us with a smiley remote).
Description:
Many decisions made in our everyday lives are influenced by expert advice, from hairstyles to insurance policies. Yet, millions of decisions are made on a daily basis and instantly expressed through our own facial expressions without any preconceived external reassurance. We continuously strive to project a desired physical self image of ourselves, sometimes requiring most of our cognitive resources, and paradoxically, this daily challenge has a big impact on our lives.

Expressions Dispatcher is designed to help people in their quest for expressiveness.
In using the device we can shift expressive responsibility and place it in the hands of an expert. This life coach will follow the wearer, analysing the context they are in, and digitally take control as to how the wearer should be perceived.

Opinion:
It’s not the main concept that interests me (the fact that an expert controls our facial expressions) but the use of the smiley as main facial expression tool. Using the smiley – a hack to the poor emotional expressivity of textual digital communication, the symbol of the flattened/compressed signal of that medium – as replacement of a human face in live communication simplifies it into only 20 different possibilities. At the opposite of my theme of work here the provocative aim is also to simplify live communication where my search is to make evolve the digital communication closer to some tangible/human feeling.