jewellerytalks

new site

2009-09-30T01:42:00.000-07:00

www.sarahkettleydesign.co.uk

Etsy

2009-02-04T03:05:00.000-08:00

Hurrah!

It's only been a few years, but I have finally managed to start listing pieces on Etsy, the successful US craft sales site. This collection dates back to my years in London, and was originally sold through Craze Two in Clerkenwell.

Little Stories

2009-02-04T03:00:00.000-08:00

I am currently an artist in residence at Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee, situated in the Masters of Design studio with Hazel White, and attached to the AHRC project, Past, Present and Future Craft. This will last until Easter, and has been made possible by the SAC's pilot Crafts Bursary scheme. To document my stay, a new blog has been set up on Wordpress, called Little Stories. You can find it here.

Leiden symposium

2008-09-09T09:18:00.000-07:00

1 - 3 pm, Lipsius 227, Leiden University

11th September 2008

click to view map of location poster affiche

click for full colour version with images

Keynote Speaker: Sarah Kettley (Edinburgh):Visualising Social Space with Networked Jewellery

Sarah Kettley will demonstrate and discuss her wearable interactive jewellery objects which are designed to be experientially rich as materials as well as on interactive level. Ensemble is an interactive collection of networked jewellery with gesturally determined real time musical output. Speckled Jewellery - an interactive suite reflecting and influencing socialisation was developed for her phD with the Speckled Computing Consortium (www.specknet.org). This work visualizes relationships as coloured lights between differing pendents, worn by five women retired from their professions who meet socially on a regular basis. Sarah Kettley is an artist researcher working at the intersections of craft and wearable technology, combining academic research with her own interaction design and contemporary jewellery practice. She worked with the Speckled Computing Consortium (www.specknet.org) to realise conceptual designs, and was supported by the Department of Silversmithing & Jewellery at Edinburgh College of Art while working on her PhD. Currently she is a research fellow at Nottingham Trent University working on the development of designs using stretchable sensors.

PDF: of images + text about two of Sarah Kettley's projects Article: Framing the Ambiguous WearableThesis: Crafting the Wearable Computer: design process and user experience Website: http://www.sarahkettley.com/

Plus short presentations by:

Taco Stolk (Amsterdam): Engaging Art + Science

An illustration of a few of his own projects and student projects. Taco Stolk is an artist and lecturer in the faculty of Image + Sound at the Hague Conservatory. Since 2000, he has also been initiator and head of the "ExtraFaculty" at the Academy of Art in The Hague. This programme examines the shifting and dissolving boundaries between art and other aspects of society, such as science, business and politics. In addition, he has given courses for the Media Technology Masters programme, Department of Computer Science, University of Leiden since 2001.

Vincent van Gerven Oei (The Hague Switzerland): Rules of Engagement

Lecture + Slideshow from the production Forty Years of Boredom 1968-2008 / Follow Us or Die (2008) by Vincent van Gerven Oei & Jonas Staal, presented in Tent., Rotterdam. Follow Us or Die extends Marxist theorist, Guy Debord's notion of the society of the spectacle into the 'digitalization' of society, based on a 'second life' and the evacuation of all human interaction. Masters Graduate ArtScience, Hague Conservatory. PhD student Media Philosophy, European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switserland. Vincent van Gerven Oei is an artist, formerly of the art group EMPATHY™, and currently works in cooperation with Jonas Staal, a writer and translator. Current projects: 'Monument: A Liminal Sociography' for Stroom, Den Haag and a translation of Dick Raaijmakers' treatise 'De methode' ('The Method').
Website: http://www.vincentwj.nl/

Alex Reuneker (The Hague): Interacting with Literature

A view on literature, interactivity and its relation to issues of immersiveness. A recent graduate in the Media Technology Masters programme at Leiden University, He lectures in Interactive Media at the Hague University.
Website: http://www.reuneker.nl/

Sonja van Kerkhoff (Leiden Aotearoa/NZ): Touching issues of engagement

A few interactive and Virtual Reality art projects are introduced and placed in the context of how art works such as these could contribute towards a socially engaged discourse. A recent graduate in the Media Technology Masters programme at Leiden University, she is an artist, webdesigner and teacher.
Website: http://www.sonjavank.com/This symposium is organized by Kirsten Korevaar, Alex Reuneker and Sonja van Kerkhoff, students of the Media Technology Masters programme, Leiden University

Crafting the Wearable Computer

2008-08-27T02:31:00.000-07:00

Finally, I have got around to putting these files together. Volume One is the main body of the thesis including the abstract, chapters, references and appendices. Volume 2 holds the published papers from 2004 - 2007.

Crafting the Wearable Computer: design process and user experience Volume One

Crafting the Wearable Computer: design process and user experience Volume Two

Crafting the Wearable Computer

2008-06-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

Here is an attempt to make my thesis available online - single file download coming soon :)

Crafting the Wearable Computer: Design process and user experience
title page
abstract
acknowledgements
contents
list of figures
chapter one: Introduction
chapter two: Authenticity
chapter three: Authenticity and Craft
chapter four: Designing for the everyday: the lifeworld of a friendship group
chapter five: A Speckled Jewellery Network
chapter six: Evaluating for the everyday
chapter seven: Reflections and contributions
references
list of publications

Peacocks and Wallflowers

2008-04-09T04:27:00.000-07:00

This is an abstract for a forthcoming paper in a special issue of Sage's Visual Communication on wearable technology. This promises to be a very interesting issue with contributions also from CuteCircuit, Stephen Barrass and High Tea with Mrs Woo. The expected publication date is October 2008.

Peacocks and Wallflowers: (in)visibility with digital jewellery
As a genre of Ubiquitous Computing, wearables inherited a paradigmatic ideal of disappearance, and until very recently, visibility was treated as a simplistic dichotomous issue of overt versus covert technology. In line with calls by theorists in New Media for oscillation between states of invisibility and reflection in the design of interfaces, this paper presents findings from a networked jewellery project which reconceptualise this problem as both situated and dynamic, revealing that wearable artefacts segue between high states of visibility and disappearance just as they afford their wearers new ways to maintain social presence.

with thanks to Anne Cranny-Francis for inviting me to contribute!

PMC award

2008-04-09T04:09:00.000-07:00

mobile earrings in silver
Precious Metal Clay and enamel
2008

The necklace in PMC and 18ct which won Small Treasures last year has now attracted further attention with the Applied Arts Award from Visual Arts Scotland.

This work can be seen at the Royal Scottish Academy on the Mound, Edinburgh as part of the VAS annual members' exhibition until April 17.

There is also a new group of PMC work on show at The Scottish Gallery as part of Fired Up! Modern Enamel Jewellery until May 3 2008.

Sage journals

2007-11-07T03:33:00.000-08:00

Sage are offering free subscription to their online journals till the end of November! sign up at http://online.sagepub.com/.
A god send for those of us outside academic institutions for however long.

new contact details

2007-10-26T00:59:00.001-07:00

Well, the thesis was finally handed in, and October arrived. My desk was summarily reclaimed and home is full to the brim with years' worth of paper. In honour of this evacuation from the ivory tower that is university life, I have a new email address:

works@sarahkettley.com

There is also a web site at http://www.sarahkettley.com, which I'd welcome feedback on, as I'm still pinning down the litle tiny gremlins within it.

Please update me in your address books. I'll still be checking the napier inbox, but I'm not sure how long it will be there.

London Metropolitan Works

2007-10-08T04:13:00.000-07:00

a quick shout out for an upcoming talk in London:
dirctions and maps for London Met can be found at http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/about/commercial-road.cfm.

JEWELLERY EVENT PROGRAMME
New materials & new methods with traditional materials

Thursday 11 October 2007 from 10.00 to 16.00

Venue: Metropolitan Works, 41 Commercial Road, London E1 1LA

Times
Event
10.00 – 10.30
Registration, refreshments and an opportunity to network with peers
10.30 – 10.45
Welcome BTTP Introduction and Update
Metropolitan Works overview
10.50 – 11.20
Geoff Hollington
International product Design and Development /Materials and Design Exchange (MADE)
11.20 – 11.45
Networking break with refreshments
11.45 – 12.15

Sarah Kettley
Jeweller and lecturer Napier University, PHD research ‘crafted interactive design’

12.20 – 13.00

Dave Turtle
Centre for Jewellery Research, RCA, Scanning, reverse engineering and milling for jewellery application
13.00 – 14.00
Networking break with lunch
14.00 – 14.30

Claire Qualmann
London Metropolitan University, Materials and Products Library Manager

14.30 – 14.40

Helen O’Neill
PMC Studio: Introduction to Precious metal clay and it’s application (advert for PMC demonstrations after refreshments)
14.40- 14.50
Networking break with refreshments
15.50 – 16.00

Helen O’Neill
PMC Studio: demonstration, working with precious metal clay

Throughout the day

Showcasing of new materials and work

Optional tour of Metropolitan Works Digital Manfacturing Centre

Consultations with BTTP advisor- Maria Laura Maffioli to discuss BTTP project benefits.

revalue

2007-09-11T14:36:00.000-07:00

Yup, these posts are just like LRT buses - except the 11 which runs only half a service to my area - anyway, you're spoilt for news this evening.

REVALUE is an important if very new blog that myself and Jaimie MacDonald are trying to kickstart in our guise as the Ethics Committee for the Association for Contemporary Jewellery. We don't have all the answers, although Jaimie's been researching recycling in jewellery for the best part of a year, and need others to post their adventures in ethical making too. We are interested in suppliers who are trying to source their products ethically, in makers who are thinking about the processes they use, and in outlets who seek to pass all this on to our customers as an added value. Please spread the word and add your tuppenceworth :)

Small Treasures

2007-09-11T14:07:00.000-07:00

This is nice. A necklace I made last year just won a competition for the creative use of Precious Metal Clay. Jewellers will know that this is a strange alchemical product that is worked like a clay, but hwen it is fired, either in a kiln, or using a torch at the bench, the clay fires out to leave assay quality metal. For a silversmith to create directly in a malleable material is a challenge, we are so used to constructing from sheet and wire. For this piece, I used fairly child like forms but tried to be quite strict about what it was that was making them work. I used 18ct yellow gold and also experimented with enamel through the PMC.

If you are in Scotland, there is a new shop in Brunstfield, Edinburgh selling PMC and a similar product, Art Clay, which I haven't tried, or if they are still there, you can also go to Fenton Barns in East Lothian, who run great introductory courses very cheaply (or at least they used to - I can't find any links online right now). I'll be using up the supply I received from the PMC Guild as a result of my happy win, and developing the work further hopefully through a course next year in Par, Cornwall.

In the meantime, I have taken a two day Picasso inspired ceramics introduction course with the amazing Frances Priest just to get my hands on some clay. Thanks Fran!

HUG

2007-09-11T13:54:00.000-07:00

OK, I am supposed to be flaking out over getting my thesis in this month, but I couldn't resist the Travelling Gallery's call for interactive works earlier this summer, and was thrilled to be asked to contribute to their Access All Areas show. Therefore, we have HUG, a big woollen ball with embroidered reactive patches - it purrs, it has a heart, it likes you.

Why? Well, when travelling on public transport in America, things happen. I was handed a flyer in a mini van by a lady coming off the night shift on my way to Moody Gardens with the family, and in it she proposed that hugging was cheap, healthy and tax free. She's right.

Access All Areas has just started touring, and I'm not sure the balls, one very large, one small, will stand up to the wear and tear. Still, the drivers were keen to help and took my little sewing kit with them - cheers guys!

I definitely see further work here, in the development of three dimensional conductive embroidery.

goto10

2007-09-11T13:44:00.000-07:00

Spring also saw me heading through to Glasgow to take part in goto10's Pure Data workshop at the CCA in collaboration with the Electronclub. Pure Data being the (some would say superior) freebie (and therefore more politically relevant) version of Max MSP. This was with a view to me being able to understand how to collaborate effectively in future projects using sound, or even to begin tinkering with sound myself in the workshop. Two intense weeks with teachers Frank Barknecht, and Chun Lee allowed us to get to grips with some fundamentals not only of sound, but also image manipulation through this amazing application.Watch this space for new work, and see Lindsay's blog entry on mundungus.

ensemble lite

2007-09-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

Long time no blog!

Following the successful full installation of ensemble at The Scottish Book Trust in March, I have to report that a smaller, more portable version was developed with a view to carting it off to festivals. The first opportunity came in the form of New Craft - Future Voices, an international conference in Dundee, Scotland, in July this year. A fantastic curatorial and exhibition team made this as pain free as possible, and a multitude of techno-craft projects and objects were brilliantly displayed. Thanks to all involved once again. Extended abstracts for the exhibition proposals can be found in the proceedings published by Duncan of Jordanstone and available online from Lulu. Go their web page and choose to preview the books.

ensemble lite, if you like, comprised two working nodes and two spot speakers, allowing gallery staff to maintain the installation, and simplifying the acoustic feedback for audience participants. I was able to transport the whole shebang in the back of the car by myself, and with instruction from Vangelis, was able to set up the Max interaction parameters to suit the space.

recovering

2007-03-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

A huge thank you to all those who made it to the Scottish Book Trust last Friday for the ensemble installation. Those behind the event were thrilled the Speckled network held up, while some of the jewellery needs a little reinforcing if it is to survive future outings....

I am in the middle of analysing how people played around with these objects and reacted to the sounds, and already have ideas for refining the work, and for taking it in new directions.

Mike Byrne has done a wonderful job of documenting the evening, and his images can be seen in Sarah Kettley's ensemble set on Flickr. We are lucky to have got Mike for studio shots of the work too, so do visit this site again for those again soon.

Ensemble has now officially been accepted as an exhibition proposal at the New Craft Future Voices conference in Dundee this July, which will of course give us the chance to gather more user feedback and develop the work further. It will be a great opportunity to meet a whole bunch of new users for the work!

Finally, although this is just about the end of the ensemble project, I suspect the blog will remain as a store of jewellery related snippets, and with any luck it will soon be pointing you to new projects and strange objects.

ensemble installation event

2007-03-03T14:35:00.000-08:00

ensemble - almost there

2007-03-03T14:16:00.000-08:00

It will all have been worth it when you turn up and play with this stuff - and we will have experts on hand to ease you into the weird and wonderful worlds of experimental wearable technology and contemporary jewellery....

The installation of ensemble will mark the end of this project, with possible further showings at New Craft, Future Voices, the Six Cities Design Festival, and perhaps a cool retail site cum gallery in Glasgow - all to be confirmed. But this is the important one, because what you, the audience, do with the work here will inform our thinking for the next batch of crazy making.

Thanks to those who came along to the movement workshop in November, your input was invaluable, and of course to all those who donated their stories. I have really enjoyed developing the work around these contributions.

Some of the first round of pieces from the movement workshop, plus the first completed computational pieces, were exhibited at the Art School of the Australian National University (ANU) during ANAT's reSkin lab throughout January this year (left), and related developmental work has been shown at the Museum of Culture in Kyoto and is also currently in submission to be shown at Visual Art Scotland's annual exhibition in Edinburgh (below).

The research team are working hard on both the report to the AHRC, and on a clutch of papers for selected conferences and workshops - wish us luck!

While I'm here, I want to thank Frank and Vangelis in particular for all their hard graft in making this come together - here's to our big evening!

remembering reskin

2007-03-03T13:25:00.000-08:00

Strange things happened out there. Rapunzel came to town for a short while, here being modeled by Michael - I did warn him...and now folk are back at work in their own environments wondering in what ways the experience is going to have changed their lives. The weather was grand for a Scot - limb loosening warmth from the word go - although recent pictures show mad hail storms and slush drifts that we'd be more used to in Auld Reekie.

Anyway, it's time to write the report and thank the SAC for funding me, and ANAT for inviting me. The piece I made while there (see below) is hopefully now part of the Visual Arts Scotland Show at the RSA on the Mound, Edinburgh, and I'm really looking forward to developing this line of work as soon as I get the chance - hello dorkbot? In the meantime you should definitely check out the reskin blog and lots of stuff on flickr - take a look at the very cool prototype section for everone's wonderful work.

Stille

‘Stille’ is a neckpiece which explores the boundary between intimate space and public performance. It attempts to capture that moment when we gather ourselves, perhaps find some kind of inner space, before a performative event.

The formal emphasis on texture and multiple elements is decorative, inviting attention, and yet the colours are subdued, allowing the wearer to downplay the extravagance of the piece. Colours and patterns have been inspired by a first visit to Australia, drawing on the Owl Eye Moth, gum tree barks and grasses, while the concept itself began with the flight of a Rosella overhead, and that momentary flash of brilliant colour – a shockingly bright event across the dryness of the surrounding land.

Sounds were collected over the course of the project, new sounds to this visitor from Scotland, like the birds calling first thing in the morning; and the many sounds of water, from the drainpipes on the single day of rain we’ve had in the last three weeks, to the surf and cicadas of Kaiola. These have in turn inspired the sounds that are available to the wearer as they roll their head to the front and sides; we are so used to the notion of surround sound as something large scale and imposing – here in contrast it is an intimate event.

reSkin

2007-01-16T11:05:00.000-08:00

This entry comes to you from Canberra, Australia, where I am taking part in reSkin, a wearables focused media lab organised by the amazing Australian Network for Arts and Technology. Today was the first day proper and we were treated to a quick and intensive introduction to building soft circuits by two of the world's best - Elise Co and Joey Berzowska. Within a single day, such weird and wonderful things wer appearing as blindfolds with red LEDs in place of eyes, shivering wrist cuffs, and light up thumb wrestling finger puppets. This image proudly presents a first breadboard, with silver foil ball for a switch.

The workshop is going to contribute to ensemble in countless ways, and not only through a necessary filling in of some fairly basic skills gaps in my own wearables practice. The working environment is extremely stimulating, as I am surrounded by some of the most talented people form a diverse range of practice, and the quality of even incidental work is very high. There is also the opportunity for dissemination in various forms - through displays in the foyer of the ANU School of Art, to presentations to the group, an invited talk at the WearNow Symposium, and a dedicated publication of ANAT's Filter magazine.

There is a daily blog happening at http://www.anat.org.au/reskin/ which is certainly worth a look, and a great introduction posted yestedray gives a comprehensive overview of the facilitators' and delegates' work. Watch this space!

And thanks are due in no small part to the Scottish Arts Council's Lottery Funding. Their interdisciplinary development award has made this trip possible.

final installation update

2006-12-05T00:12:00.000-08:00

Please note that we have taken the executive decision to move the date of the final installation for ensemble to mid March.

We will still be using the Scottish Book Trust, and may be adding one or two further venues, so watch this space. Our apologies to those that were looking forward to the event this month, but we can look forward now to bringing you a quality piece of work...

imeldific

2006-11-08T02:11:00.000-08:00

Imeldific is the term coined by Philipinos to describe Imelda Marcos' style of ostentation, long before bling became household terminology. On the 18th November, Imelda launches her own range of jewellery, The Imelda Collection, cobbled together from flea market finds and 'vintage gems'. The Metro draws a link between her new found creativity and the confiscation of her tiaras, rubies and emeralds by the Philippines government since her husband was ejected from the army in 1986. Mrs Marcos returned from exile in Hawaii in 1991 and has since run for president.

ahrc

2006-11-01T02:16:00.000-08:00

The ensemble project is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through their Arts and Science Fellowship award. There is also a more academic website related to the project which gives motivations and related work in some detail.

Anyone interested in digital jewellery should look at the work of Hazel White, Jayne Wallace, Ulli Oberlack, Norman Cherry and Biojewellery, to name just a few. Mike Press, previously of Sheffield Hallam, and now at Dundee, also maintains an important web resource on issues in digital design, and a further blog on craft research can be found attached to activity at Dundee.

Those wishing to follow up the debate in craft and digital practice would do well to start with the Challenging Craft website, where the full papers presneted at the 2004 conference are still available.

Craft debate with or without the digital can be found at New Craft Future Voices, a conference website currently showing abstracts and exhibition proposals, and taking place next year in Dundee. This is connected with the AHRC project Past, Present and Future Craft Practice: exploration of the interrelations between skill, intent, and culture, headed up by Georgina Follet and Louise Diamond.

change

2006-10-26T05:28:00.000-07:00

At the Scrapyard Challenge, reported on earlier in this blog, I met an Amsterdam based artist called Sonja van Kerkhoff. She told me a great story about 'Change', a performance work she did in the UK in 1996, centred around the concepts of value, objects and human transactions. Sonja made a series of resin coins and took them onto the streets of London and Hull to convince people of their worth as art objects. She asked people to assess their worth, and to offer something comparable in value in return for one of them.

Her full account of this work makes wonderful reading and can be seen at http://www.sonjavank.com/change.htm, but I include an excerpt here, because it relates directly to the significances of jewellery. In this transaction, she has found another artist to be quite difficult to deal with. He has been finding strategies for hiding himself, including behind his own art practice, the notion of fakery, and in discussion about postmodernism. Finally, he relents, and looks for something of value to exchange:

As he searched over his body for pockets and things, I pointed to his ring covered fingers. His face lit up. He pulled off the ring from his little finger and said "yes, it had to be this one". He then asked me to read the inside, which read 'together forever' in French, and then he proceeded to tell me a long story about how it had belonged to his father who had found it as a boy. It seemed to be an old ring, but since his art was creating a fake history for objects, I wasn't sure about the story, but that gaze in his eyes told me he knew, as painful as it was, that this was a suitable trade, and I felt it too, even though I didn't really want to wear a bulky ring on my finger. His eight year old daughter was present during most of this discussion, and in particular when we traded the coin and the ring. She was very upset by this. Apparently the ring really did belong to her grandfather and for her it was a symbol of his presence, which was now on the finger of a stranger.

About three hours later, he came to me with his daughter and said that against his wishes we had to trade the items back because his daughter was getting more upset.

I'd like to thank Sonja for this contribution and for her very interesting discussions, not to mention the Edam cheese.

Tina Rose

2006-10-24T02:44:00.000-07:00

Many thanks are due to Tina Rose, editor of the craftscotland website, for helping publicise the ensemble project. Tina sent me this story in August, so I must apologise profusely to her for only getting it onto the blog now:

I have a jewellery story to contribute. My grandmother lived in London, and we would visit every summer. I always loved going through her jewellery box and trying everything on and she said when she died I would get her engagement ring. Well, when she died we discovered this ring had been stolen, so my Mum gave me a ring she had given her. It was bought at the British Empire Exhibition in 1924 by my grandfather as a thank you to my grandmother for having my mother. It always seemed more special to me because of that history. Both my grandmother and mother are dead now, and last year my flat was broken into and all their rings – wedding, etc – that had been left to me were stolen. I was upset most about losing this ring. A week after the burglary I picked up a cheap necklace in my jewellery box and discovered the ring had got tangled with it so I still had it. It is even more special now and it’s nice that it has connections with both my grandmother and mother.

With all best wishes to Tina, and a belated thank you for this tale!

movement workshops

2006-10-19T08:51:00.000-07:00

The ensemble project will be hosting a movement workshop at Napier University, Edinburgh, on the evening of Wednesday 1st November.

From 7.30pm, visitors are invited to play with the basic jewellery forms created for the project, informing the design of the soundscape to come. Pieces range from huge cuff forms to rubbery seaweed, and are not your usual everyday twinset and pearls by any means! A wee glass of wine will be available to all who take part, and the meeting will also allow anyone who is interested to contribute a story of their own.

Venue: Room B14 ('the glass box'), Design and Media Arts, Napier University, Colinton Road, Edinburgh EH10 5DT

Time: Wednesday 1st November 2006 :: 7.30 - 9pm

contact: Sarah at s.kettley@napier.ac.uk or on 0131 455 2789

The final installation is planned for the 14 December at the Scottish Book Trust between 7 and 8.30pm. More details will follow.

extended deadline for participation

2006-10-06T08:54:00.000-07:00

First of all, a big thank you to those who have sent stories to me via email. After an astonishingly busy late summer, I will be adding these to this site very soon (so if you've been looking for them in vain, I do apologise!).

Second, there has been some coverage of the ensemble project recently on craft and jewellery sites such as craftscotlan d.org, which is wonderful. Some of the dates differ slightly for the deadline for submitting stories or being interviewed. The deadline has now been extended to the end of November 2006! And we still need you. I am trying to collect as many interviews in the Edinburgh area at the end of October however, to give us a chance to edit them and work them into the soundscape, so please do get in touch if you have half an hour, and be part of a great project!

Scrapyard Challenge

2006-07-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

Run by Katherine Moriwaki and Jonah Brucker-Cohen
Steim, Amsterdam, 21 June 2006
many pictures can found here

A brilliant day at the Scrapyard Challenge, led by Katherine Moriwaki and Jonah…a day which at first appeared totally scary, faced by tables of geeky wires, sensors, motors etc, plus soldering tables and controllers with a guy on midi there too. However, the promise that ‘drawbots’ would break down the barriers for all of us was well founded – by half past ten I’d built my first ‘robot’ which did in fact draw. OK, it used agitation and an off-centre weight to create motion, but as soon as these principles became tangible, people became engrossed in extending their application, connecting motors and appendages in new ways for different movement, attaching them to flexible rulers, with pens at the horizontal, and so on. I tried to get a lovely mechanical three pronged whisk to rotate with my motor – even adding an extra one, then two, to power the individual shafts, but really the mechanical resistance was too great for the motors we had – to be continued...

I couldn’t let the day go by without making the most of especially Katherine’s expertise in the use of conductive textiles, and right enough, it was simple to very quickly put together an ‘instrument’ for one or two bodies, comprising four separate channels and the switch – that is, four strands of fabric, each with its own wire connection (to 5V), and a sleeve piece which could ‘strum’ them, producing individual chords and notes. Worn by two people, it became a self-defence mechanism, a blocking device, with movement implied by the form of the piece. Worn by one person, it was more ‘intimate’, an itch to be scratched – not a comfortable looking interaction.

Also tried to make a piece with knots using different quantities of conductive thread, the idea being that a knot of four times the size of another would produce a note resulting from a comparatively increased resistance. It didn’t work, but the fault may have been in the midi processing rather than elsewhere. It did, however, create a variable resistor, and so gave a nice pitch bend. Each knot gave the same pitch bend (on the same note), but the larger one felt better to use as an interface.

Interestingly, the workshop illustrated the craft aspects of electronic and physical computing design, in that it was often to a great extent materials led. Forms existing in objects, and discoveries of functionality and principle led to innovative and creative juxtapositions of form, interaction and output. No-one began with a high level concept and looked for the best technology to realise it. There was a kind of brainstorming through materials, an iteration with interaction possibilities, and also a potential process for further work, beyond the ‘lash-up’. These seem to have a strong resonance with craft characteristics – exploration and workmanship?

Many participants talked about the value of the playfulness of the event as opposed to planned design projects, whether for university modules or in search of funding. Particularly, the opportunity to ask ‘dumb’ questions in a supportive environment was highly valued, especially as the response would be hands on rather than abstract, and this coupled with the non-precious nature of the approach meant that mistakes could be learnt from with impunity.

Queen Munch and Queen Nibble

2006-06-27T01:15:00.000-07:00

My daughter's favourite bed time story just now is Carol Ann Duffy's Queen Munch and Queen Nibble. The two queens' personalities are described through their dress: one is colourful, noisy and gregarious (and loves food), the other is 'like a stick of celery', contemplative, and never hungry. While Queen Munch's queendom is as 'splendid as gingerbread', Queen Nibble likes nothing better than to make rain jewellery:

When it rained she would rush outside, pull her long silver needle from one pocket and her golden thread from another and rush up and down, threading and stitching the rain as it fell.

She made wonderful necklaces from the rain, beautiful earrings and pretty rings, faulous tiaras and twinkling cufflinks. This amazing jewellery was kept under guard in Nibble Castle in a glass case which read:

JEWELS FROM THE RAIN OF QUEEN NIBBLE

and nobody was allowed to touch it.

Of course, this sad state of affairs is changed forever, when the two queens meet and the rain comes down. But you must read it for yourself, or your daughter, to find out how this happens, and to wonder at Duffy's sensitive drawing of attitudes to life through the things that we surround ourselves with.

true tales

2006-06-27T00:52:00.000-07:00

I found this short story in Paul Auster's True Tales of American Life, a collection of stories drawn from public submissions to NPR's Weekend All Things Considered National Story Project in 1999:

Star and Chain

In 1961, during a visit to Provincetown, Massachusetts, I bought a hand-crafted one-of-a-kind Star of David on a chain. I wore it all the time. In 1981 the chain broke while I was swimming in the ocean off Atlantic City, and I lost it in the surf. In 1991, during Christmas vacation, my fifteen year old son and I were poking around in an antique shop in Lake Placid, new York, when a piece of jewelry caught his eye. He called me over to take a look. It was the Star of David that had been swallowed up by the ocean ten years before.

Steve Lacheen

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

RCA and sociology

2006-06-21T01:31:00.000-07:00

I've been trawling the web recently for appearances of jewellery in literature and instead ended up at the RCA website, looking at research projects.

Antje Illner is interesting from the point of view of ensemble, in that she is exploring unusual materials and processes, and has collaborated with product designers to develop surfaces for mobile phones. She has also created interactive installations for Swatch.

The research strategy for the goldsmithing, silversmithing, metalwork and jewelley department states that its Sociological Issues strand is so far less focused than other areas, and that despite becoming 'central in much contemporary debate', remains a more difficult one to approach. Perhaps this is because we take for granted the meanings of jewellery in everyday life, negotiating them on a daily basis; if so, current everyday western jewellery offers the social anthropologist a rich ground for 'making the familiar strange'.

Mah Rana

2006-06-13T00:58:00.000-07:00

Those in the field will have heard the name Mah Rana before. Rana has systematically treated jewellery as a conceptual entity, researching her own family history and investigating the social institutions, rites and rituals that create, and are revealed by, so many forms of adornment. Her ongoing Meanings and Attachments project also collects narrative evidence of the entanglements of jewellery in the form of portrait photographs and stories from her subjects. See this and Jewellery is Life at http://www.mahrana.com/work.htm.

jewellerytalks

2006-06-07T02:39:00.000-07:00

submit your stories now!

you can post your stories direct to this site - click on 'blog this!' above, and type away....

2006-06-07T02:18:00.000-07:00

Welcome to jewellerytalks. This is a public space for the collection of personal anecdotes about jewellery and all the weird things it can mean to us.

We want to collect personal stories related to jewellery in any way. Whether you hated a piece given to you as a gift, find war medals inspiring, fiddle flirtatiously with earrings, or harbour a fondness for the sting of the piercing gun, we want to hear from you.

For those who are interested, this site is linked to current research into wearable computing and contemporary craft.

From June till August 2006, we will be looking for willing people to interview, so if you want to tell your story or vent your feelings however vaguely related to the subject of jewellery, email us and we will talk to you.