The Cass student profiles content store_hidden Elizaveta Gnatchenko Our students and alumni

Jewellery and Sentimental Attachment in the Digital Age: A Comparative Study of Analogue and Technology Enhanced Jewellery

Research Group:
Making Matters

Supervisors:
Simone ten Hompel and Dr Gabriele Oropallo

Abstract:
This research proposal looks into the gap in literature looking at attachment theory and how it analyses the relationship among young people to digital objects of personal adornment in personal, social and professional contexts. The major focus of the research will lie in investigating the preconceptions that might exist of digital jewellery objects being gadgets, solely functional devices with a limited lifespan, and how these might cause limitations in engaging with the objects.

The jewellery object that is enhanced with technological function is appropriated by different users in different contexts (Wallace, 2011), hence they generate different forms of attachment to the object. The role of the designer's input and initial function of a technological object transforms and is completed through personal meanings. Therefore, the role of a device can be adapted and enhanced through personal ways of interacting with technology. A user can also assign emotional value to a specific item.

The research into changes of personal appropriation of a pre-determined technological jewellery piece questions the roles of time and context that define personal appropriation. It also argues a need for design to be less prescribed in their ‘spatial, temporal or functional scope’. The lack of empirical research undermines the key findings of the research; however, it opens ground for further investigation into the subject. The focal point will be looking into how jewellery artefacts with embedded digital functions can engage and provoke an emotional response in its wearer, stimulate connections with the others via digital technologies such as visual and audio data, and finally collapse spatial and temporal limitations of an experience.

Born in Russia, Elizaveta Gnatchenko has a BA (Hons) in jewellery design from Central Saint Martins, an MA in jewellery design from The Royal College of Art, a Foundation Diploma from Central Saint Martins and a degree in sociology from Moscow State University. During her education she was the winner of the Craft and Design Council award, Fashion & Conceptual Jewellery, Gold & Silver Wyre Drawers Company Award in 2012 and the New Designers Moon Jewellery Associate Prize in 2010.

Elizaveta's education allowed her to investigate jewellery from a traditional craftsmanship perspective. The emergence of smart or digital jewellery pieces inspired her to want to develop an understanding of emotional capacity of these. The development of digital jewellery shows a natural progression where arts, science and crafts come together to create a new jewellery artefact that digitally native public would better engage with on psychological level.