LONDON — When Tony Quan, an American graffiti artist known by the tag name TEMPT1, contracted amyotropic lateral sclerosis, an often fatal form of motor neurone disease, his condition deteriorated rapidly until he was paralyzed except for his eyes. A group of friends from the Free Art & Technology laboratory, Graffiti Research Lab and other art and technology organizations joined forces to try to find ways of enabling him to continue his work.

The result was EyeWriter. The team fitted eye-tracking technology to a cheap pair of eyeglasses together with specially developed software that records Mr. Quan’s eye movements and relays them wirelessly to a laptop computer placed near to the wall that is to be tagged. The laptop is connected to a laser-tagging kit that paints graffiti on to the wall in the shapes and colors specified by Mr. Quan, even though he is lying miles away on a hospital bed.

EyeWriter is one of the projects featured in “Talk to Me,” an exhibition opening July 24 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York to explore how innovations in communication design are transforming our lives. The premise of the show is simple: that communication is now the dominant force in design.