Dr Stephen Thompson

e: sthompson@cardiffmet.ac.uk
w: www.metatechnic.org

Specialist Subject Areas

Product Design & Interaction Design Practice and Philosophy
I explore how humans and technology interact in the construction of what we take to be everyday reality. (‘speculative-life-systems’).
My expertise lies in my questioning of accepted ways we understand things, deconstructing those preconceptions and reconstructing them into new ideas.

Qualifications

PhD
Master of Arts (Royal College of Art)
BA (hons)

Biography

Stephen is Deputy Dean / Director of Learning and Teaching of Cardiff School of Art & Design (UWIC).

Stephen started his career working for a number of design consultancies in Britain and Germany before establishing his own design practice and eventually moving into a career as an academic. Formerly an industrial designer, Stephen is now more widely recognised in his field as a far-sighted and provocative thinker. He draws a wide range of academic ideas into a creative field of ‘speculative-life-systems’. His PhD thesis, (Artefacts, Technicity and Humanisation : industrial design and the problem of anoetic technologies.) extends many of the experimental ideas he has brought to design from his time at the Royal College of Art.

Stephen is a co-convenor of MeAT research at Cardiff Metropolitan University (UWIC), a member of the Design Enhanced Human Futures theme within the Wales Institute of Research in Art and Design. Stephen works in collaboration with the Transtechnology Research Network at the University of Plymouth. At CSAD he supervises nine PhD students and teaches a speculative-life-systems approach to undergraduate and postgraduate designers.

Current research

More practical and applied than philosophy but more creative and questioning than engineering, the study of speculative-life-systems explores how it might be possible to actually live a real life as a posthuman. Artists and designers sometimes find it difficult to converse with those who specialise in the full technicalities of philosophy or science, nevertheless speculative-life-systems is an exciting territory to occupy because it offers a glimpse of how the world might be and also helps to explain why our world doesn’t always work in a way we would like it to. A special kind of conversation is required which must test and combine ideas in a synergistic way in order to act as a kind of lamp others might follow. In the 19th Century the task was to build everyday life in a new machine age, our challenge is to find a way to live with new kinds of unbounded biotechnological possibilities. In order to do this we need to understand what is really important.

Stephen’s current project ‘semi-i-infinite’ is a series of speculative thought experiments exploring how ideas of cell signalling, bio-morphogenesis might make possible a practical and creative form of distributed consciousness.

Principal Publications and/or Exhibitions

THOMPSON, S. 2010. Joey a Mechanical Boy. The Transtechnology Reader. Plymouth.

THOMPSON, S. 2010. MeAT Research. Leonardo Electronic Almanac.

THOMPSON, S. 2010. Enchantment, the Designer and the Technology of Fantastic Reality. Shadow Play: Alchemy, Redolence & En schantment. Conference, Cardiff, November 2010.

EARDLEY, R., DINKA, D., and THOMPSON, S. 2010. Designing Skype video-communication for the home. Group 2010 Workshop on Connecting Families. Pending

THOMPSON, S. 2010. Engineering the Soma: A Posthuman Design Perspective. Zoontechnics. Cardiff. May 2010.

THOMPSON, S. 2009. Joey: A design scenario for an ordinary life in the future. Technoetic Arts, Vol. 7. 1. July, 2009.

GLEN, N., HEAD, A., and THOMPSON, S. 2009. A ‘Hybrid Space’ for Peer Review: Can Facebook inspire new ways of thinking? ECEL 2009. University of Bari.

THOMPSON, S., and VINES, J. 2009. Enacted experience and Interaction Design: New perspectives. In: Ramduny-Ellis, D,. Dix, A., Hare, J., and Gill, S. 2009. Physicality 2009 – towards a less-GUI interface. Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Physicality. British HCI 2009. Cambridge Sept. 2009.

NEIL, S., THOMPSON, S. and MORGAN, A. 2009. Defining research within the intersection of external work and academic life. WIRAD 1st National Symposium for Emerging Art & Design Researchers. Cardiff, April, 2009.

HUMPHRIES, T., MORGAN, A. and THOMPSON, S. 2009. Can humour be plausibly talked about as if it were, or had some similarity to, a technology?. WIRAD’s 1st National Symposium for Emerging Art & Design Researchers. Cardiff, April 2009

THOMPSON, S. 2009. ‘A research degree by practice, surely not?’ WIRAD 1st National Symposium for Emerging Art & Design Researchers. Cardiff, April, 2009.

Modules Taught

Supervision of Doctoral Research

Theo Humphries – Exploring the co-evolution of humour and technology. (CSAD)

Rachel Eardley – Physicality and the interaction with digital systems. (CSAD)

Alise Piebalga – BioArt and understandings of human technology relationships. (CSAD)

Fakri Mohammed – Novel Techniques using Rotoscopy for Developing Motor Skills in Children with Mild Cognitive Disabilities (CSAD)

Jane Davison – Interdisciplinary Practice in Higher Education. (PDR)

Adam Martin – Trajectories of Wearable Technology Research (PDR)

Martyn Woodward – The European Avant Garde as a progenitor of technological development. (Plymouth)

Completed

Dr John Vines – Interaction Design for the Elderly – a new non-prejudicial approach to understanding cognition. (Plymouth)