Digital Meets Handmade

Jewelry Design, Manufacture, and Art in the Twenty-First Century

Susanna Testa, Wendy Yothers, Alba Cappellieri

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781438487663
• eBook ISBN: 9781438487656
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

Embraces the problems and solutions posed by the dynamic dance of digital technology with the traditions of craftsmanship and perceived value in jewelry.

Over the past twenty years, a seismic shift has occurred in jewelry design and manufacturing. As digital design, digital model-making, and prototyping have elbowed their way into common practice, they have proven themselves to be both invaluable and disruptive to the jewelry profession. Bringing together the perspectives of artisans, educators, students, mavens from the realm of fine jewelry, renegades from the Wild West of the maker movement, and innovators from the digital engineering sector, Digital Meets Handmade addresses a wide range of topics in jewelry design, delving into the broad conversation around how digital technologies and virtuoso handcraft can coalesce in jewelry as wearable art. While one might expect a collision of cultures-"fine jewelry" craftspeople versus digital engineers-the result instead is a dazzling array of critical thinking, with stunning illustrations that foretell the future of jewelry.

Jewelry Interactions: From Analog to Digital

Alba Cappellieri, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Livia Tenuta, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Susanna Testa, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Abstract

Digital technologies and scientific advancements, besides having revolutionized the entire jewelry supply chain, overturning the phases and the roles of the actors involved, have permeated the products themselves, affecting their physical and aesthetic features and the systems of interaction they enable.

This paper aims to investigate the different systems of interactions within the field of jewelry, focusing on the transition from an analog to a digital context.

First, the effects of digital technologies on the supply chains in terms of interaction are briefly described. In particular, the paper finds a possibility to generate an important value for the consumers in open structures, engaging them in co-creating the products along the different phases.

Furthermore, the analysis focuses on the product, describing the evolution of interaction mediated by jewelry conceived as an interface, from analog to digital.

To this end, the paper suggests a classification of the different types of interaction systems enabled by jewelry as a medium: the static linear system (analog jewelry), the dynamic linear system (relational jewelry), the close circuit dynamic system (jewelry made with smart and reactive materials), and the open circuit dynamic system (wearable technologies). The different systems are described in terms of relationships, features and elements of interaction.

The analysis demonstrates how circular open systems represent a turning point for the evolution of body ornaments. This system resulting from new technological and scientific advancements enhances some features that were already intrinsic in the more traditional jewelry systems, such as the relational component it also offers and, other powerful tools to create a one-of-a-kind and made-to-measure experience for the wearer.

1. Jewelry from Emotion to Experience

The inclusion of digital technologies has revolutionized the jewelry system, shattering and fluidifying it. The distinction among the different areas is increasingly blurred, the production paradigms tend to blend and contaminate each other.During the last century jewelry was univocally conceived in terms of precious materials, and characterized for passing to future generations. The contemporary jewelry landscape instead is extremely heterogeneous, animated by such a plurality of languages, concepts, and meanings, sometimes in contrast among themselves, that makes it difficult to formulate a univocal definition (Cappellieri, 2016, p.18).

Investment or fashion accessory, ornament or sculpture, industrial or handmade, mass produced or one-of-a-kind, the multiplicity of interpretations suggest a common element: the emotional component intrinsically linked to jewelry (Carcano at al., 2005).

The value of the ornament can be connected to the attributed meaning, to the emotion that it is able to raise. Whether it is associated with its uniqueness, the preciousness of materials and the manufacturing expertise, the symbolic value of representing a memory or a gift, the ornamental spectacularity, the idea, or the project value, jewelry may convey emotions for the wearer. The widespread distribution of digital technologies, despite having affected the process in terms of optimization and improvement of performances for jewelry companies, has also created the possibility of impacting the final consumer experience. The new powerful technological tools in fact describe an open system, allowing the consumer to take part in the different phases of the process. This systemic interaction generates an added value in terms of experience, amplifying the product’s emotional component.

New technologies in fact enable the designer to engage the final consumer in a dynamic way from the design phase to the production. This leads to products’ ability to respond to the needs of the clients, in terms of wearability and aesthetics.

Additive technologies and parametric modeling software have not only revolutionized the aesthetics of the final product, allowing the implementation of shapes and finishing otherwise unobtainable because of timing and cost with traditional tools, but have also put into effect the possibility for the user to intervene in the production of physical objects, starting from digital tools.

Digital co-creation platforms set up a new virtual space for collaboration, where the role of the designer is no longer related to the definition of the final structure of the object, but consists in regulating and programming the very procedure; therefore, design lies increasingly in defining parametric algorithms able to generate structures with infinite variations, thus maintaining a common coherent matrix. A pioneering example of virtual interactions within the jewelry sector is represented by Nervous System. This tech-oriented design studio, recurring to generative systems, additive manufacturing and digital platforms, enables consumers to easily create their own customized products. Through the use of these tools users can directly interact with the graphic interface, creating unlimited formal variations, generating organic-like structures, such as the perfect geometry of fractals, extremely complex and always new figures, which become one-of-a-kind pieces, produced on demand.

Virtual platforms valorize the role of consumers, shortening the supply chain while making the process interactive. Shapeways, Sculpteo, and Igniverse are examples of companies whose use of technology enables users to upload digital sketches, choose materials, prototype pieces, and potentially sell them online.

New technologies not only allow the user to create highly customized and one-of-a-kind products, but also “made-to-measure” pieces, adjustable to the size of each and every body. 3D scanners offer the possibility of measuring and accurately tracing the three-dimensional shape of the human figure. The end product will fit the precise contours of the intended client.

The advantages of digital technologies are not only addressed to optimize processes and to create highly adaptive products, scattering the concept of “size,” but also to create sparks for creative experimentation within the sector. Portrait Me, the project by Vivian Meller and Laura Alvarado, for example, reinterprets the traditional cameo in a modern and ironic way. The characters have been dressed up with historical costumes and then accurately reproduced through the use of a 3D scanner. The shapes were then printed with a laser sintering technique in a brooch collection.

Digital technologies have also revolutionized the retail experience, offline and online. This has not only overturned the dynamics of product distribution and sale through e-commerce, but also promoted the development of online spaces enabling interactive experiences where the user can virtually try on the product via augmented reality before buying it. Boucheron is one of the first luxury brands that understood the potential of this digital marketing strategy. Since 2010, through the use of augmented reality, the company has been offering customers the opportunity to try on its precious creations and digitally visit the boutique on the website.

New technologies, besides having highly influenced the entire productive system, overturning the phases and the roles of the actors involved, have permeated the products themselves, affecting their aesthetic features, increasing their performances, and conferring new meanings.

2. Jewelry as Interface

Traditionally, jewelry has always acted as a cultural vehicle, transmitting information about the identity of the wearer. However, ornaments have also played the role of a practical tool, with shapes, functions and meanings that have changed over time.

The practical functionality was highly emphasized in the first pieces of jewelry produced by ancient civilizations: Kenyans utilized finger-knives to cut shrubs and gather berries, Indians recurred to the use of heavy bracelets whose weight and sharp profiles made it a great tool for personal defense (Cappellieri et al, 2014). The instrumental utility of the ornament has fallen by the wayside, until it almost completely got lost during the modern history. The introduction of digital technology has partially restored the binomial of function and aesthetic: this has marked the transition from aesthetic-ornament to prosthetic-ornament, reactive objects, highly autonomous, designed with the ambition of overtaking the limits imposed by the human body, which is amplified, empowered, and monitored.

The introduction of the technological element changes the nature of the product that, from a mostly static piece, becomes an open, dynamic, and functional structure.

To this purpose, Baudrillard’s (2005) considerations about the concept of functionality are particularly interesting. The term “functional” moves away from its common sense of responding to a precise scope, but adapts to a specific order or system: functionality is the property of organically integrating in a context. Therefore, the functional object, according to Baudrillard, is not an object whose primary aim is to satisfy a need, but an element of gaming, of combination and calculation in a universal system of signs. The objects are conceived as open structures, characterized by a configuration that makes them assimilated to concepts: despite their apparent formal finitude, they are not defined in use and content. This margin of indetermination makes them highly interpretable. This has influenced the consumers’ experience of use: users not only wear the piece of jewelry, but they contribute to complete its sense, defining it, conferring a meaning. These objects “liven up,” thanks to the voluntary or involuntary interaction they have with the wearer and/or the surroundings. They are highly customizable because they can perfectly adapt to the wearer’s behavior. The most essential difference compared to traditional jewelry is this degree of indetermination: incomplete objects, interface-jewelry items, that are defined in the moment of use, enabling dynamic interactions at different levels.

The transition from the analog context to the digital system has modified the features of the interaction, not only between the users and the piece of jewelry, but also of the relationship, mediated by the ornament, among users, users and environment, users and their own bodies, and users and other objects, enabling other forms of interactions, such as the one with the system.

This research aims to outline and classify the different types of systems enabled by jewelry items. To this end, the following macro categories have been identified:

— the static linear system: analog jewelry;

— the dynamic linear system: relational jewelry;

— the close circuit dynamic system: jewelry made with smart and reactive materials; and

— the open circuit dynamic system: wearable technologies.

The areas are described in terms of systemic and relational features that result from the different interaction enabled by jewelry.

Even though the technological and scientific experimentations have facilitated complex dynamic systemic interactions to a significant degree, the seed of the relational component can be seen also in some typologies of jewelry within the traditional analog system.

3. Analog System Interaction

3.1. The Static Linear System

The traditional jewelry system describes a mainly static system, where the consumer interacts with the piece of jewelry wearing it, conferring different meanings to it. This procedure doesn’t contemplate either a practical instrumental functionality, nor the possibility of actively taking part to the design phase and modifying the aesthetic features.

The traditional system provides an experience between the user and the product mainly based on analog inert components, such as the physical features of the material, the surface treatments, and the overall shape.

The interaction within this context is mostly based on voluntary inputs by the wearer and passive feedbacks from the objects, usually visual or tactile. Besides the first degree of relationship between the user and the piece of jewelry, the enabled system also provides...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Preface
• Introduction
• Jewelry Interactions: From Analog to Digital
• The Future of Jewelry Programs in Higher Education: The Intersection of Technology and Handcraft
• Finding the Sensuous in Digital:Can “the Hand of the Maker” Survive the Digital Age?
• Digital Tooling and Handcrafting
• The Grid, from Colonial to Digital: The Role of Digital Technology in Craft Making
• Craft, Pedagogy, and the Digital Challenge: A Jewelry Perspective
• Materializing Humanbeingness in Jewelry through Digital Transformation
• Hand vs. Machine: Three Methods of Jewellery Making
• A Virtual Tradition
• Pixels Bejeweled: Modern Media, Contemporary Jewelry, and the Replication of Desire
• Glitch in the Copy: Research into Noise Artifact in Digital Reproduction
• Future Carriers of Our Past
• Discursive Jewellery, Marine Plastic Waste, and Mediational Aesthetic Recontextualization
• A Reexamination of Jewelers’ Titles and Nomenclature
• Traditional Handcrafted Jewelry versus Contemporary Digital Jewelry Dictated by the Culture, Fashion, and Modern Trends of Hindu Families of Andhra Pradesh, India
• Innovative Movable Structure Design for Jewelry Application Based on Integrated 3D Printing and Lost-Wax Casting Technology
• Digital Humanity and the Visualization of the Jewellery Archive and Kinematic Reinterpretation of Historic Jewellery
• Back Cover