Ward, Matt, Goldsmiths, University of London

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Home > Departments > Academic departments > Design > People > Design staff > Ward, Matt

Matt Ward

Position held:
Programme Leader BA Design

Phone:
+44 (0)20 7717 2290

Fax:
+44 (0)20 7919 7797

Email:
m.ward (@gold.ac.uk)

Website:
http://sb129.wordpress.com/
http://cargocollective.com/DWFE

Matt teaches across the department on both theoretical and studio courses. He’s the Programme Leader for the BA Design and currently runs the second year. Matt is the External Examiner for MA Design Products at the RCA.

His research spans a wide range of interests from speculative design to radical pedagogy. He’s a practicing designer, writer and founding member of DWFE; a post-disciplinary, semi-fictional design syndicate. DWFE’s work searches for meaning in the construction of the extraordinary; they design activities, objects and incidents to reconfigure people’s perceptions.

Matt holds three international patents on the work he did at NCR’s Advanced Research and Development Department on the emerging contexts of the Internet of Things and Urban Computing. Matt has been a research affiliate to MIT Media Lab and Interaction Design at The RCA. He consults for a range of organisations; Nokia, BERG, Dentsu and the Design Council. He lectures internationally about design, technology and education, writes a blog and takes a lot of photographs.

Blog

SB129

This Space Is Not For Sale

In this post I’m going to try to articulate some of the concerns I have about the commodification of public space through technology. As networked, augmented, technologically mediated experiences start to dominate our lives, how do we make space for non-consumption based activities, how do we design new forms of common space for reflection and …

The Fate of Things to Come: Making and Unmaking the Future

In 2007 I started to sketch out a book with the very brilliant Mike Michael, it was a lot of fun, but it got lost in busy times. Some of the ideas I’ve presented in different places (at Nokia Advanced Design in mid-2008 and at Design Transfer in Berlin later in 2008), but I’ve never …

Reflections on a transdisciplinary education

As an educator and a designer, I’ve spent most of the last decade thinking about and doing design education – but I’ve been in the thick of it, on the front line; giving lectures, writing briefs, managing curriculums, directing courses and giving tutorials. So I talk and think about design A LOT – the content and quality …

My favourite Flatlander: remembering Nic Hughes

On Sunday 7th October my friend Nic Hughes lost his fight against cancer. He leaves a big hole in the lives of those he knew. He was one of the kindest, smartest and most talented men I’ve had the pleasure to meet. The World without Nic is smaller – diminished and less bright – and without him …

‘The Matt Ward Manoeuvre’ (part 1)

Over the last six or seven years I’ve developed a series of drawing activities and processes that I’ve taught to my undergraduate students. The course emerged out of a need to teach our students a diverse range of ideational processes; activities to adopt and adapt to aid their design practice. Over the years I’ve also …

The digitally divided self

It’s a common observation that social media channels allow us to compartmentalise our lives. In a recent performance/lecture by Rebekka Kill at Improving Reality she looked at the political and social differences between Facebook and Twitter. Rebekka compared the platforms to punk and disco (twitter being punk and Facebook being disco), tracking and comparing their …

The importance of not knowing: reflections of a designer tutor

Every year I give a talk to PhD students, new members of academic staff and visiting tutors who are embarking on a PG Certificate in the Management of Learning and Teaching in High Education. I’m asked to talk about ‘Academic Practice’ and the importance of being a reflective practitioner. To put it more simply, I …

On Performance

Over the last few years at Goldsmiths, I’ve seen and encouraged a fascinating trend towards an engagement with performance. Within other disciplines (and in design theory) this has been called the ‘performative turn‘, but I’ll leave it to others, far more rigorous than I, to explain the theoretical genesis. What I’d like to do is …

Maps of our lives

Since writing my post about the architecture of dementia and reading the wonderful Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon, I’ve been thinking a lot about how spatial scales change throughout our lives – from childhood to old age. Having a toddler has heightened my awareness of the boundaries and thresholds of exploration – the limits …

Design and the deconstruction of violence

Last November I gave a talk at the UMEA Fall Summit, organised by the wonderful Matt Cottam, (you can watch it here if you like) during the talk I discussed two of DWFE‘s projects: The Parasitic Spectacular and Green=Boom. Considering that UMEA is a relatively conservative design school, I was pretty worried about how the …

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