I build like I breathe — from what’s around me. Found objects, old PCBs, scarred wood, salvaged screws. Not because I have to, but because I want to fight back against a culture that throws everything away — including ideas, people, and time.
My work is assemblage: not just of materials, but of meaning. I mix the digital and the analog, the handmade and the "brain-made." Wires, wood, code, and curiosity. Everything is visible. No slick black box. I want people to see how it’s built — to inspire them to build, to break, to rebuild. Nothing sacred. Everything hackable.
Sometimes, form follows function. Other times, function follows play. If something has a purpose, I make that purpose unambiguous. But I also believe in whimsy — in joy for joy’s sake. A device that makes you smile has already served its purpose.
I borrow from wabi-sabi, kintsugi, and sashiko — traditions that remind us that imperfection is beauty, and repair is a form of storytelling. My objects carry their scars proudly, like we do. They’re incomplete, evolving. Just like us.
I believe that everyone can make. My work is a provocation: you can do this too. The world teaches us to be consumers. But when we make, we reclaim our agency — and our humanity. Like Remy in Ratatouille, we all have the right to create. Making is a rebellion against meaninglessness.
I prototype fast and loose. I fail. I break things. Then I learn. Then I design. Then I build again. Process is the point. AI might be a tool that serves as an idea generator, but it’s the human soul that brings feeling — that gives shape to chaos, and chaos to structure.
Art is not about answers. It’s about opening doors to the wildness of thought. It’s how we release ideas and emotions from the prison of our individual minds into something universal. Spoken words pass knowledge; art passes the unspoken — the mystery, the emotion, the ache.
I don’t believe life has meaning built in. We give it meaning by what we do. I choose to create. To patch together beauty from broken things. To leave something behind that speaks, not in instructions, but in feeling.
The world is absurd. People believe they’re rational, but often aren’t. Trying to force perfect order is just fear in a patriarchal costume. But if you can see the beauty in the chaos, if you can laugh in the dark and build anyway, then you’ve already won.
This life is the gift. On our deathbeds, we regret what we didn’t do, not what we tried and failed. So I make. I share. I encourage. Because in this short ride we’ve been given, making things with our hands and our hearts might be the most human thing we have left.
-Michael Parks