Born in 1942 on the Isle of Wight, has lived in Berlin since 1969. After studying in London, he worked as an architect until 1979. Since 1980, he has been active in the field of kinetic art and sound art. In 1979 he built his first music machine, The Flute Playing Machine. In the 80‘s and 90‘s, Riches built, amongst other things, a self-playing violin and numerous percussion works. Riches presents his works as installations as well as in concerts and performances. Tom Johnson, Wolfram Erber, Roland Pfrengle and others have written compositions for music machines. His most recent interests include mechanical speech synthesis (The Talking Machine), animatronics and the construction of mechanical clocks.

Exhibitions and installations (selection):
1981 Music-, Percussion- and Time Machines, Galerie Andre, Berlin; 1983 Music Machines, Institute of Contemporary Art, London; 1985 und 1994 INVENTIONEN Berlin; 1996 Ein Ton, sonambiente - Festival, Berlin; 1999 Interactive Field, Biennale'99, Tokyo; Motormouth, eine sprechende Maschine, Berlinische Galerie; 2000 The Talking Machine, Ausstellung "Alien Intellegience", Kiasma-Museum, Helsinki; Can You Hear Me?, ein unterirdisches Sprachrohr-Netzwerk in der Paul-und-Charlotte-Kniese Schule, Berlin; Audio Surfer, "ZeitReise", Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

Gruppenausstellungen:
1980 Écouter par les Yeux, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; 1987 Echo Festival, Het Apollohuis, Eindhoven; 1990 Spring Works, New York Hall of Science; 1991 Artec, Museum of Modern Art, Nagoya (Japan); 1994 Klingende Dinge, Schloß Ottenstein, Österreich; Musica Mechanica, Donaueschingen '94. Daneben zahlreiche Performances und Konzerte u.a. in Zusammenarbeit mit Eberhard Blum.