Vendmaster 3000:
A Language Game Among Capitalist Machines:

Vendmaster 3000 is a candy dispenser that operates with speech recognition. It offers three egzotic flavors from India, Germany and South Korea for users who are capable of pronounciating the name of the brand in the local accent.

Users deposit 25 cents for their desired flavor and try to mimic a native speaker in five tries. If they can succeed, they receive their candy. If not, the machine gives their money back.

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This project is conceived as an unfamiliar encounter with intelligent machines embedded in public spaces. It is modeled like a language game between two subjects, a real and an artificial one or a familiar and a strange one. One subject, here, is a vending machine that tells us the conditions of non-native speakers during one of the most ordinary acts of the everyday: something as ordinary as buying a bag of candy from the vending machine. Users, on their way to purchase candy, are kindly challenged and asked if they can pronounce the word “Skittles” the way a Korean would do in South Korea or “Mike and Ike” with a German accent or “Hot Tamales”, as if they are asking for it in a store in India. These candies here are offered as rare items, exotic products, quite unusual to the vending culture. While branded candies are often considered ahistorical and placeless for most Americans, here they are presented with an authentic quality, an origin that renders them more valuable in public opinion, perhaps in return of a small favor.