See/ CraftCube: Research: Jayne Wallace/
Threads, Jayne Wallace, 2008 Photo: Jayne Wallace, 2009
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CraftCube: Research: Jayne Wallace
The aim of the research-based CraftCube series is to champion and expose to a broader audience practice-based research that explores the boundaries of contemporary craft and its relationship with digital technology.
The freestanding CraftCube is a complete, experiential display environment containing objects and dynamic interpretation. It is compact, lightweight and suitable for display in museums and galleries, libraries, higher education galleries, corporate environments or at events, conferences and festivals.
Developed in partnership with Newcastle University and the UK Research Council’s Digital Hub (SiDE), this cube houses a collection of pieces that reveal a trajectory of digital jewellery research into memory and memory loss by Dr Jayne Wallace. The selected works are reflective pieces based on source material gathered from care staff at Alzheimer’s Society day care centres and people living with memory loss as well as in-depth co-creative research with an individual living with dementia.
Viewers enter the CraftCube to interact with the pieces and uncover the personal stories around them. The cube is being designed directly with Dr Jayne Wallace, creating a personal and visually engaging environment for her work. Key to the design is viewer interaction with the works and interpretation.
Dr Jayne Wallace is a digital artist with a background in contemporary jewellery. She has been part of the research cluster based in Culture Lab since 2006, initially as an artist in residence, then as a research associate in Fine Art, gaining a Norma Lipman bequest fellowship in ceramic sculpture and more recently as a research associate in Computing Science within the UK Research Council’s Digital Economy Research Hub (Social inclusion through the digital economy – SiDE).
The core of Wallace’s work considers how jewellery can act to play a role within what we consider personally meaningful for us in our lives and how the expression of this can be enriched through the integration of digital technologies. She sees the role of a contemporary jeweller as not to add an aesthetic to a technology, but to force much bigger questions and issues; questioning motivations, relevancies, and forms of digital objects and interaction. Current research includes the theme of personhood in dementia stemming from an artist residency at the Institute of Ageing and Health and supported by the Alzheimer’s Society North East and a grant from the Arts Council England.
www.digitaljewellery.com
The research cluster focuses on interaction with computers in everyday settings, and the role technology plays in making people’s lives more meaningful. This spans a number of traditional fields in computer science, from human-computer interaction and computer graphics, to artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.
The Digital Economy Research Hub aims to tackle social exclusion by making it easier for people to access the life-changing benefits offered by digital technologies.
The Hub addresses four fields where digital technologies and the building of a truly inclusive digital economy could deliver major social benefits: Connected Home & Community; Accessibility; Inclusive Transport Services; and Creative Industries.
SiDE www.side.ac.uk
We would like to thank:
RCUK Digital Hub ‘Inclusion through the Digital Economy’
Prof Patrick Olivier and his research team at Culture lab: James Thomas, Dan Jackson, Guy Schofield, Dr Cas Ladha, Dr Karim Ladha, Dr John Shearer
Additional thanks:
Dr Julian Hughes, Doug Lamond, Ben Atkinson
Alzheimer’s Society
Institute for Ageing and Health
Arts Council, England
