Thomas Thwaites

Thomas Thwaites was very shy when speaking about his art practice, it felt as though he wanted to justify each and every action, which was endearing, as an art student I know how it feels to be critiqued. In his own words he described him as "a designer... of speculative sorts". His medium of practice is technology, something I don't come across often as I don't find it that interesting. He decided to present to us his "Toaster Project" which started with the quote "Left to his own devices, he couldn't build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it" from The Beginner's Guide To The Galaxy (a book turned film). He decided at that point that seeing as he didn't know how to make a toaster either,  he'd learn how to. He looked up on wikipedia "how to make a toaster" articles and wrote down the websites description. Thwaites then bought the cheapest toaster he could, so he could take it apart and look at the individual bits that made it up.
The 5 main materials were steel, mica, plastic, copper and nickel so Thwaites had to research where to find these materials. He asked whoever he could from mines and factories how to mine and make key materials. He ended up making everything from scratch and even moulded and built up the circuits to make up the toaster.

As you can see, the resulting toaster (above) looks bloody terrible, but the whole point of the piece was to investigate the processes into making a toaster rather than slavishly reconstructing one. Although I'm glad the toaster I have at home doesn't look like that.
Thwaites also had the cheeky idea of trying to sell his toaster at John Lewis on their shop floor. Funnily enough no one wanted to buy it, especially as he put the price as around £1000 due to the cost of the raw materials and work put it.
There ended up being quite a bit of publicity due to this project from both sides of the environmental debate, but Thwaites has said that the art piece is open to interpretation rather than taking a stance. He was more interested in the knowledge, time and effort that go into mass production of goods.

Thwaites also discussed future visions of business and environment and how they may work with or against each other.
Thwaites was asked "are humans becoming obsolete against technology?", a question we all wanted to hear his opinion on, to which he replied that he didn't think humans would ever become completely obsolete but by wanting change that "tearing down the system won't help: evolution, not revolution"