Peacocks and Wallflowers

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

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.