Kiwi Tactics
Liesbeth den Besten 2010
The meaning and communication of jewellery
Peter Deckers 7 June 2010
The meaning and communication of jewellery
The meaning and communication of jewellery is complex. Looking back on its long history it is still hard to rationalise why jewellery is so popular. Examining both contemporary and ancient jewellery reveals a variety of intentions including: attracting, camouflaging, and gifting, commemorating, possessing, protecting, symbolising affiliation, investing, fashioning and collecting. These are fictional motives, constructed from cultural and social environments. Will the evolving technological world be able to alter the transcendent fabrication which has traditionally been for so long attached to jewellery?
Looking for applications of the technological future of body adornment, I am drawn to science-fiction (sci-fi) movies in which the garments are integrated with jewellery. One such instance is where adornment technology is formulated within the fabric: for instance the fabric glows when the wearer is emotional or its patterns change instantly. I believe these things are possible, but new technology does not always bring real change.
The precision and speed of cutting edge technology has enabled everyday items to be adorned with their own jewel-like embellishments, such as mag wheels on cars and fancy keypads on cell phones. But do these new forms of adornment push the boundaries of what belongs to contemporary jewellery, as we know it? Eg Nokia has turned its formidable digital technology into jewellery, yet somehow their main distinctive feature (a display of your own downloaded Jpeg image onto a tiny screen) only enhances the old values related to personal beauty. Despite this sci-fi styling, it is simply based on the old fashioned traditional locket. Nothing in this case has really changed.
In fact, I am sure that the particular elemental characteristics related to jewellery ownership will never change whatever inventions are made. If an ordinary gold ring can be the most beloved possession as well as the most private, worth more than money can buy; then other values are at work. These values are not based on monetary worth, fashion thrills, or technological innovation. Jewellery’s intrinsic value relates to a sacred (personal) memory, projected through transcendence. This transcendence erases rationality and objectivity and promises instead, magic, sensitivity and immortality. It does this through the memory of an important and significant impact, formulated through personal narratives, or in other words through confrontations and related stories.
Story-making and story-telling in combination with jewellery-ownership surpasses material, trends and design qualities. The concept that the story has intrinsic and irreplaceable value makes a story part of the whole. A story depicts its owner. The story is always private told through the connotative system of the memory. May be this archaic intrinsic mode is why jewellery easily surpasses the novelty items as beautified key pads. Contemporary jewellery enjoys also artistic merits, which are in line with other (artistic) practices. The question of why we need jewellery can easily be applied to paintings. Why do we need those?