Laurel Swan is exploring a number of projects, focused on an exploration of the intersection between design and technological innovation. The various projects fall loosely into two themes, which are described below.

Tensions in Translation.

This involves the articulation of design projects being produced within the Design Interactions department, as a means of bringing the projects to different communities within technology and the sciences. In examining projects with an eye to how they might be relevant for other disciplines, there is potential to uncover something different and unexpected within the projects, in the way that turning something over and looking at it upside down or from one side can reveal unexpected things.

Therefore, instead of being simply an exercise in translation, the aim is to add something more, to elaborate and to augment, by examining the intersection of these different disciplines as a place were tensions and disruptions are more likely to occur.

Undefined Future Practices.

This is concerned with nascent areas of new technologies, in particular technologies that have yet to be fully established within delineated boundaries.The focus is on emerging practices around these technologies, especially those that might be thought of as uneasy hybrids.

The primary interest is in examining areas that disrupt established ideas of science and technology, or combine existing disciplines in ways that don’t always sit comfortably.

Examples of areas of interest are social robotics, new wave AI, emerging techniques for visualising brain activity and computational biology.