Tom Richards, Ode to the Appliance
Open 16th of July – 2nd of August, Thurs – Sun, 12 – 5pm
Private View: 16th of July, 6 – 9pm
Curated by Lisa Baldini

We are in the age of the convergent device where the evolution of technology
relies on its portability, its update-ability, and most importantly its multi-tasking
capabilities. Here, ‘errors’ occur at the peril of the user and the object. But, as
media theorist Jussi Parikka has pointed out, viral contagions and subsequent
errors are the opening up point for necessary mutations in technology — the
obstacle that offers the very re-affirmation of technological advancement.1

Tom Richards’s sculptures take the error as the object. One part homage and
one part farcical critique, Richards’s sculptures are one-dimensional from
inception: with no other function other than, in the instance of It’s Party Time and
Not One Minute We Can Lose, the nonsensical clicking and popping of a speaker
— a rhythm that takes us nowhere but perhaps laughter. In an atemporal move,
Richards disavows the history of programming since the 1970s by programming
the object at the machine code level. In turn, interaction is internalized and the
user nullified.

A new evolutionary tract for the machine is born, whereby the man/machine
paradigm is less related to man steering the world with the aid of the machine
followed by the subsequent replacement of man by the machine. On the contrary,
the machine is offered its own genealogy and moments to interact with each
other; users, here, are now the witness.2 What interactions can we expect? In
keeping with the farcical part of his critique, Richards uses the sound of earlier
industrial materials/objects to offer a playful set of rhythms that become consumed and reprocessed as another objectʼs rhythm, as is the case
when Straight Men Canʼt Vogue, an elegantly designed electricianʼs box come
recording/playback device, comes into contact with the speaker popping Itʼs Party
Time… Thus, what is offered to the witness is the sound of machine on machine
contact.

Tom Richards received his MFA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and
Design in 2004. His work has been seen and heard at: Working Rooms,
Affluenza, Project Space 176, Meals and SUVs, Sightsonic: York International
Festival of Digital Arts, Resonance FM, Sounding Out: Festival of Sound at UEL,
Interlace at Goldsmiths, Stanley Picker Gallery and Factio at Emerson Studios.
Recently, his work has been included in ‘Handmade Electronic Music: the Art of
Hardware Hacking’ (Nicholas Collins, Routledge 2009). He lives and works in
London.

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1 Jussi Parikka and Tony D. Sampson, ed., The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other
Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture, (Cresskill: Hampton Press, 2009).
2 Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, I: The Fault of Epimetheus, trans. Richard Beardsworth
and George Collins (California: Stanford University Press, 1998).

Read PSFK’s interview with Tom Richards HERE
http://www.psfk.com/2010/07/ode-to-the-appliance-against-convergence-culture-and-the-speed-of-technology.html