#mouthpiece MOUTHPIECE New Media Gallery New Westminster Vancouver Many thanks to : Sarah Joyce Director/Curator and Gordon Duggan Director + Curator September 30 - December 11 Tony Oursler, Diemut Strebe, Nathaniel Mellors & Erkka Nissinen ...people’s voices are more revelatory than their eyes or the looks on their faces [...]: the vocalised sound goes from inside to inside, links two existences without further mediation. Paul Zumthor We are delighted to present four extraordinary artists who explore the complexities of the human condition through fragmented body and human voice. The voice is a generic human practice with aesthetic, physiological, cultural, historical, and psychological texture and meaning. These allegorical works with mouths are able to voice and communicate human behaviours, beliefs and fears. Singing, speaking, humming and whispering, they are delivered to us through a world of technology. A pioneer of video and installation art, Tony Oursler’s glass-headed, AI b0ts have been inoculated with miniature video and sound technologies. Described as ‘Metaphors for alienated, isolated modern individuals in a technology-driven culture”, the bOts question our belief in the future of technology & AI, whispering, questioning and prophesying dystopian futures. Diemut Strebe's groundbreaking practice brings us The Prayer ; a disembodied, prosthetic rubber mouth with voice box; animated by artificial intelligence, powered by an algorithm that draws from world religious texts. The work was built at MIT around Strebe's research question “How would a divine epiphany appear to an artificial intelligence?” Mellors & Nissinen present us with the absurd character Bad Mantras, from their grand political parody, The Aalto Natives (Venice Biennale). Attached to the wall of a ubiquitous recording studio, a mass of pink-felt, muppet heads, without a body, attempt a group hum while trying to play musical instruments together. Trapped on the wall, their tangled robotic arms reach out to attempt contact...and harmony. Thanks ❤️#lissongallery ❤️#lehmannmaupin NYC #baldwingallery , Aspen, Colorado❤️