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1. INTRODUCTION
Recent technological advancements have resulted in a climate where technology is too intrusive the increased miniaturisation and mobility of digital technologies has led to a number of proposals for digital objects which use jewellery as a way to locate communication and information devices on the body. However, these developments are emerging from outside the field of contemporary jewellery. Consequently digital jewellery is significantly under-explored within contemporary jewellery practice and the emerging developments from other fields present a narrow interpretation of both jewellery and digital technologies. In terms of aesthetics there is a distinct naivety regarding the form, material, connection with the body and scope of interaction of a digital jewellery object. Moreover there is a paucity of approaches that consider emotional and intimate attachments people form with and around objects. These limitations are evident in both physical and conceptual constraints. Beyond this, the qualities that we have come to associate with the digital are born from a predominantly consumer electronics field and are both narrow and hindering if we wish to consider digital technologies having wider, more emotional scope in our lives. Therefore an exploration of digital jewellery that addresses these issues and seeks to escape the limiting assumptions we have of the digital is needed.
The latest computer craze has been to be able to wear wireless computers. The Computer Fashion Wave, "Digital Jewellery" looks to be the next sizzling fashion trend of the technological wave. The combination of shrinking computer devices and increasing computer power has allowed several companies to begin producing fashion jewellery with embedded intelligence. Today’s, manufacturers place millions of transistors on a microchip, which can be used to make small devices that store tons of digital data.. The whole concept behind this is to be able to communicate to others by means of wireless appliances. The other key factor of this concept market is to stay fashionable at the same time. Researchers have already created an array of digital-jewellery prototypes.
2. WHAT IS DIGITAL JEWELLERY?
Digital jewellery is the fashion jewellery with embedded intelligence. “Digital jewellery” can help you solve problems like forgotten passwords and security badges. “Digital jewellery” is a nascent catchphrase for wearable ID devices that contain personal information like passwords, identification, and account information. They have the potential to be all-in-one replacements for your driver’s license, key chain, business cards, credit cards, health insurance card, corporate security badge, and loose cash. They can also solve a common dilemma of today’s wired world – the forgotten password.
Digital jewellery can come in other forms as well. Innovators at IBM and the MIT Media Laboratory have developed “personal area networks” (PANs) that transfer simple information via human touch, by “capacitively coupling picoamp currents through the body.” A low-level electric current carries the information from transmitter to receiver, passing simple identifying information like name, title, and phone number. As digital jewellery matures, this kind of function is a natural inclusion to the feature set. Other possible inclusions are memory aids, PDA functions, and environmental augmentation.
2.1. OVERVIEW
The phenomenon of the wearable computer has arisen from the desire to create a mobile, personal computer system. The makers of wearables aim to house the personal computer on the body maintaining the convention of screen, keyboard and mouse. Wearables have been worn (by their originators) despite their bulky size and weight, and it is readily apparent that considerations of the aesthetic possibilities or the intimate nature of the relationship between the body and the object remains under-explored. Technological innovation has to date been the dominant concern for wearables research. Thad Starner (2001) outlined the challenges facing the development of wearables as power use, heat dissipation, networking, interface design and privacy; with no mention of the user’s emotional experiences of such devices.
Bubblebadge (Fig 2.1.1) and Body Coupled FingeRing (Fig 2.1.2) are examples of early human-computer interaction outputs. Each example posits jewellery as a vehicle for digital communication, and the body as a mobile location for such devices
The Bubblebadge houses a digital display, to display text generated by the wearer, by a specific environment or by the viewer. In one scenario the brooch could show the viewer if they had received any new emails, at which point the viewer may end the conversation with the wearer and go and check her or his emails. FingeRing similarly focuses on usability and treats the body as a convenient location to situate an electronic device. Sensors are attached to each finger in the form of rings to facilitate the input of data into a portable or wearable personal digital assistant (PDA).
IBM Research has been exploring digital jewellery through the work of Denise Chan, a mechanical engineering graduate . Chan’s concept was a set of jewellery objects, which together functioned as a wearable mobile phone.
2.2. DIGITAL JEWELLERY AND ITS COMPONENTS
Soon, cell phones will take a totally new form, appearing to have no form at all. Instead of one single device, cell phones will be broken up into their basic components and packaged as various pieces of digital jewellery. Each piece of jewellery will contain a fraction of the components found in a conventional mobile phone. Together, the digital-jewellery cell phone should work just like a conventional cell phone.
The various components that are inside a cell phone: Microphone, Receiver, Touch pad, Display, Circuit board, Antenna, and Battery. IBM has developed a prototype of a cell phone that consists of several pieces of digital jewellery that will work together wirelessly, possibly with Blue tooth wireless technology, to perform the functions of the above components.