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."