Stuart Walker, Imagination, Lancaster University - LICA Seminar Series 2009

The Chimera Reified - Design, Meaning and the Post-Consumerism Object.

In this talk I will examine the roles and meanings of manufactured products within contemporary society, with a particular focus on consumer electronics. A brief overview of electronic products is given, in terms of their instrumental, social and socio-positional values, along with some of their social and environmental consequences. As part of a practice-based, research through design approach, a conceptual 'post-consumerism' electronic object is presented and its role within design inquiry is explained. Reflecting on this object leads to a consideration of change to address concerns linked to sustainability. Incremental changes are considered, but a case is made for more fundamental, systemic change by applying to electronic products a traditional form of interpretation, which reveals their deficiency within broader understandings of human meaning.

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