A smile confuses an approaching frown. But how do you like the idea of showing your smile while wearing a mask?

For environmental and social reasons, mask are more and more common in some parts of the world. Due to the mask, people cannot exchange facial reactions with strangers.

Based in Shanghai, China, Simone Baudengo launched an experimental LED mask, Unmask, a mask that allows to read your facial expressions and unmask your "emotion" hidden underneath.

Now you can fake your smile even while wearing mask. (All photographs courtesy of Simone Baudengo)

Wearing masks is very common in China due to the air pollution. You can see people wear it in the streets, in the metro and generally in every outdoor public place as soon as the indexes go over 100.

Chinese wear masks often due to air pollution.

Additionally in nearby Japan masks are very common, but for a variety of different  reasons that go from the fear of passing flu to shy girls trying to conceal a badly done makeup.

Japanese definitely love masking.

In both scenarios wearing a mask could become a daily routine, whether for an ecological or a social dystopian evolution and if you ever would wear one, you soon realize that it changes the way you interact with people and the environment around us. The experimental LED masks enables a certain degree of social interaction.