How Fast Are You?

Artist Thomas Thwaites has project at the Royal College of Art in London that reminds me of nothing so much as the James Burke television series Connections, which I absolutely loved as a young nerd, and still adore as an old nerd.

Mr. Thwaites is building a toaster from scratch, including smelting metals and making his own plastics. Quoth we make money not art:

Under its rather unassuming name, The Toaster Project is probably the most ambitious project of the show. It is also a clever and humorous reflection on today’s most burning issues such as sustainability, industrialization, mass consumption, child labour, DIY culture, etc. Its author, Thomas Thwaites is trying to make an electric toaster, from scratch. Beginning with mining the raw materials. And yes, that means extracting oil to make plastic and even processing his own copper to make the pins of the electric plug, the cord, and internal wires, iron for the steel grilling apparatus, and the spring to pop up the toast, mica around which the heating element is wound and nickel for the heating elements The end result which will hopefully see the light of the day for the RCA Summer show in June will be a fully functioning toaster.

The extraction and processing of these materials happens on a scale irreconcilable with that of a mass product that Argos sells for a few pounds throughout the UK and that performs the very mundane task of toasting your bread every morning.

If you’re in London some time between now and summer, just go ahead and add this to your list of things to do.

The fine people at we make money not art have a great writeup and more pictures, and there’s a little more information at The Toaster Project.