Functionality in Wearable Tech: Device, as Jewelry, as Body Mediator

Jewelry has long been used to modify one's body and mediate experiences and interactions. Fulfilling a variety of roles, ranging from ritual objects to sentimental tokens to pure adornment, jewelry provides an externalization on the body of inner expression, non-verbally communicating information about the wearer to those she or he encounters. "Functionality in Wearable Tech," a set of three jewelry pieces, seeks to satirize and call attention to wearable technology's transition into the space that jewelry has occupied for thousands of years. Through the use of cheap robotic children's toys, converted into "functional" jewelry, the series of work considers desired and real emotional attachments to technological and jewelry objects, and those objects in between. The documented performance captures an exploration of jewelry with technological media and the ostentatious statement wearing Wearables today makes.