In his native Japan, lighting designer and DJ Daito Manabe is lauded as a genius. With his latest LED concepts and Faceprojection technology, the world is starting to take notice too.
Daito first became a subject of Western conversation after he and fellow lighting designer Motoi Ishibashi’s ‘Party in your Mouth’ concept was snapped up for use in a campaign by high-end clothing retailer Laforet Harajuku.
The campaign’s main advert, embedded below, features a group of models walk past a Japanese couple while flashing different coloured LED lights as they smile.
Why would anyone want glowing molars though, and how does it work? According to Laforest spokesperson Takahiro Yoshida, “Young people in Japan like new kinds of fashion and they say this is unique.” Creator Manabe has already confirmed that he has received many enquiries as to whether one can simply purchase their own LED mouthpiece, yet for now at least, such a product does not exist.
“We want to produce these teeth lights commercially and hope to be able to do that in the next two months or so,” Manabe told French news agency Relaxnews. “We think people who are going to parties will want to wear them, or young people when they go to a music festival or club.”
What began as an experiment between Ishibashi and Manabe is quickly gaining traction online, where wearers can now pre-program the colours available for their stick-on mouthpiece or the pace at which the beat-responsive LED lights flick from one colour to the next.
As for Manabe’s next foray into the art-meets-tech world, the designer’s latest experiment is Faceprojection, where a computer-generated video is projected onto a subject’s face. While Faceprojection, much like LED teeth, has no obvious application as yet, it’s extremely impressive all the same and deserves a mention.
To keep up-to-date with Daito Manabe’s latest projects, you can visit his personal website here.
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ podcast – listen to the latest episode now!
