Makeshift iPod-Grill Is Music to Ya' Mouf - Minyanville.com

Are you like so many other music lovers out there, putting your iPod in your mouth just so you can have the experience of listening to your favorite songs through your teeth? Haven’t you thought, “There’s got to be a better way?”

Well, now there is. Introducing the new Play-A-Grill, a retainer-like device outfitted with an MP3 player that fits right over your pearly whites. Portable music has never sounded -- and tasted -- so good!  

Aping the design of the grillz sometimes seen gleaming from the jaws of hip-hop stars, Parsons New School for Design student Aisen Chacin created the Play-A-Grill to make portable music a blinged-out fashion statement. Finally, we can stop subjecting our pricey Apple (AAPL) devices to bite marks and saliva while look “Fabolous” while doing so.

Chacin made the prototype with a wax mold of her top teeth top and connected it to portable music player’s headphone jack that was hacked with a vibrating motor. “Because the grill is worn over the teeth, sound can be transmitted using bone conduction hearing instead of outside speakers or headphones,” Chacin explained. The buttons are placed so that they can controlled with a flick of the tongue.

This mouth boombox lacks Wi-Fi or 4G capabilities so no streaming from Pandora (P) or Google Music (GOOG). That is, at least until they embed an antenna in, say, a nose or eyebrow ring.

Since rapper Lil Wayne had to surgically remove his $150,000 bottom grill before serving his stint at Rikers Island for weapons charges, the Play-A-Grill may be a nice getting-out-of-prison gift for himself. And in case he gets sent back to the clink, this one is designed to pop right out.  

While the device goes in your mouth, it doesn’t appear to be completely hands-free. As it was demonstrated in a video shot at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference last week, the wearer was forced to plug her ears in order to hear the music. And even then she seemed to struggle.  

On Chacin’s website, she describes herself as “a regenerating composition of cells that collaborate to form an independent unit, despite of this precarious human condition.” Which makes just about as much sense as her invention.