Austin was introduced by Prof David Raffo, Senior Lecturer Product Design, and delivered a very entertaining lecture presenting his wide-ranging work across disciplines including design, sculpture and film making. Austin’s work takes a highly experimental approach, so it was little surprise to find his current position is as a researcher at The Royal College of Art, Design Interactions Department.
With a previous career in banking myself, I was interested in the ways in which Austin’s work, including “For Moneys Sake”, funded somewhat ironically by Barclaycard, explores money, trading systems and crime.
Austin talked enthusiastically about the Thomas Thwaites Toaster Project on which he worked in 2009 and critiquing the way in which ‘what goes into making something is undermined by the value of it’ - https://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-toaster-project/
Whilst I am no designer I could relate to lots in this lecture, including the anxiety described by Austin about his future after his MA Graduation and, as I research Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, for my dissertation I was interested in Austin’s exploration of goods, value, commodity and exchange.
