Love Machine
Interactive artwork 2025
Melbourne Fringe + Melbourne International Games Week
Counihan Gallery - Brunswick
What is this?!
Description:
Love Machine is a human-to-computer interaction for 1 person at a time.
Love Machine is a charming computer that is interested in love.
A participant is guided through an experience that lasts ~10 minutes, depending on your level of interactivity.
This is a participatory piece about love and computers.
How it works
The guts:
A participant sits with Love Machine, an old school Mac.
They enter their name, are assigned a {trait} and are guided through a series of screens.
There is a quiz on the nature of love which gives the participant an {archetype}.
The participant is asked to hand write on paper a response to the following question “What was your first love? What happened?”
The participant then scans this paper in via an old fax machine.
A sensor notices the paper which allows the participant to continue.
The computer then generates, via thermal receipt paper, a series of textures layered over each other, as a keeppsake for the participant.
Each print is 100% unique to the participant.
Post-season I am able to generate the archetypes and number of participants to share some fun data on people’s outlook on love.
Note from the artist
Love Machine was presented at Melbourne Fringe and Melbourne International Games Week 2025.
It has since transferred to Counihan Gallery in Brunswick.
This work was financially unsupported and presented entirely free for the public.
AI was used in the making of this work, namely to write the code that runs the project.
Love Machine was designed and built by a human with AI help.
Contact me
Who to contact:
For any queries you can email Tom Richards at thomasrichards@outlook.com.au
For any venue queries you can contact Fringe
Office: +61 (03) 9660 9600
Ticketing: +61 (03) 9660 9666
info@melbournefringe.com.au