Why Should Jewellers Care About The “Digital” ?

The widespread development of technological components that could be miniaturised and worn on the body has opened new possibilities for jewellers to explore the intersection of jewellery practices and the capabilities of digital technologies. Increasingly jewellery can play a role in valuing the body, understanding, amplifying and highlighting the body. However, this area remains under-explored within the contemporary jewellery practice. This paper provides a critical review of digital jewellery practice from a jeweller’s perspective and offers the grounding for a framework for understanding digital jewellery that reveals its potential within people’s lives. The research seeks to explore the more poetic qualities of interaction with digital technologies that can enrich intimacy with other people, places and ultimately the self. For clarity, digital jewellery refers to jewellery objects which contain electronic components. Similar terms are in use by practitioners across disciplines, such as smart jewellery, computational jewellery, tech jewellery and the interpretation of the terms may vary from one discipline to the other. I have chosen the term digital jewellery, not as a limitation, but as a starting point of the discussion around the potential role of digital worn objects in our lives.