Love Machine is turning oversharing into coded confessions (Melbourne Fringe Festival)

Tom Richards is stepping into new territory with Love Machine: his first installation, first hardware build, and first time coding. The project, presented as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, pairs humans with a slightly clunky computer, inviting participants to share, reflect, and explore the nature of intimacy in a digital world. It’s equal parts experiment, theatre, and cheeky curiosity, with a touch of AI.

Richards has faced plenty of hurdles and even a few tears along the way in bringing this project to life. "There were loads of firsts with Love Machine!" he laughs. "Straight out of the gate, coding and hardware. I was relying heavily on AI and LLMs (Large Language Models) while learning Python in parallel."

"Now I know that AI is a bit of a dirty word in the arts industry, and rightfully so, I don’t trust it either, but it has been an interesting process nonetheless," he tells me. "For clarity’s sake, AI did not create this idea, it is not designed by AI, I designed it and I am using AI to achieve things out of my technical range. It's been the biggest obstacle and boon, because the amount of back and forth with AI has been incredibly time consuming, far more than it would have been with a programmer or creative technologist, someone I didn’t really have access to."

Richards' previous works as part of Hot Lunch have been big, messy, and chaotic shows, including the incredible One of These Things First earlier this year. But with Love Machine, he has scaled it down to an exchange between one person and computer at a time. "The aim for a one-on-one format is to help foster the environment for a participant to engage in that deep way. To reflect on love, experience and memory and share that privately with a machine," he explains. "I’m fascinated by what we are prepared to share with a machine. Humans tend to be more willing to confide their deepest darkest secrets to a computer over another person, which is madness as huge companies are constantly collecting and selling that data."

 

Richards sees this tendency to overshare pop up in playful ways too. "I feel like we live in a hyper-personalised world at the moment. A few months ago, I was part of a LLM trial at work, and someone excitedly told the group that they had asked ChatGPT, “What kind of dog would I be?” I just find that fascinating! We are constantly going to computers to tell us who we are, to reveal some deep insight about us!"

"There are countless ways we share personal information with technology that we wouldn’t give to a stranger, but we happily divulge to a computer for some kind of realisation. That’s how I think about Love Machine, and at the end of the day it’s a question for the participant: Are you OK with this? I hope that participants consider their inputs into machines and pay attention to the outputs, what you receive in return," Richards says. "I’d like to think that the stories shared will allow them to ponder over a specific time, which could bring up all manner of things. The output of Love Machine may or may not reflect their emotional response, and that is part of the experience itself!"

 

This is also the reason that Richards has chosen an old-school, clunky computer as the medium for Love Machine instead of something sleek and modern like an iPad. "At heart I’m a theatre nerd and I wanted to lift this installation slightly out of the everyday. We text non-stop, engage via our laptops and standing desks. I hope participants feel like they are engaging with something a little more analogue, and in doing so, something a little more honest."

Love, memory, and a slightly clunky computer make up the mix Richards is stirring with Love Machine. Fringe Festival-goers can have one-on-one time with the machine and perhaps, in the process, a glimpse of themselves. With its limited run and maximum curiosity, this is one experience you won’t want to miss: a machine that wants your drama, not your data.

FRINGE FIVE FAST ONES

1. A song I could listen to on repeat forever is I Can’t Go For That (No Can  Do) by Daryl Hall and John Oates. One of pop’s greatest and grooviest songs and actually about how the music industry treats artists. Gold.
2. One object I can’t live without backstage is not an object, but I recite the same poem before every performance I have been a part of since uni. It is both a vocal warm up and a prayer. Sonnet 12.
3. My favourite word is experience. It’s deeply life centred which is something that we seem to be focusing less and less on.
4. Something unexpected that brings me joy is this off ramp from Bell Street in Coburg North, before it hits the highway. It takes you down to Pascoe Vale road and it kid of winds and loops a little while smoothly descending, driving down it feels like being on a spaceship runway or being a pinball going down a chute. I love it.
5. If I could live one day as someone else, it would be David Lynch comes to mind. He just seemed to be so in touch with the creative pool and made a career trusting his weird gut. I admire that.

Show Details

Venue: Trades Hall, Cnr Lygon & Victoria Sts, Carlton
Season: 8 - 12 October | from 5:30pm
Duration: 10 - 15 minutes
Tickets: Free
Bookings: Melbourne Fringe Festival

Image Credits: Tom Richards