As I outlined in a previous post, we used examples of jewellery cases (or jewel caskets, as they were often called) from the Victorian period to inspire our design of the kit’s container. Since the content of the kit is electro-mobile jewellery, a jewellery box makes sense not only thematically but also for arranging small parts, intentionally structuring access to elements of the kit, and keeping everything secure. We began this process by sketching cases inspired by various jewel caskets.

Sketches of a Victorian jewel casket care of Nina Belojevic and the MLab

Once we decided what components we wanted to comprise the case, we began working through several iterations of the design in Rhino 3D. While creating the 3D model, we wanted to represent the aesthetic intricacies of a Victorian jewel casket, which could be manufactured using some of the CNC (computer numerical control) equipment we have in our Digital Fabrication Lab. Since such equipment can be difficult to access (e.g., due to costs, training, and matters of infrastructure), we also wanted to make it possible to render a simpler version of the box using hand tools. Although a simpler version may lack the intricacies of Victorian caskets, many details can be added to the base model during post-production. These details include illustrations, engravings, and hardware.

In fact, when designing our base model, we did not include the details for a finished box. As such, that model does not include any decorative elements. Its surfaces are rather minimalist, not Victorian, in their design. To this model we add engravings and other features corresponding with Victorian caskets. These features complement the guides for the early wearable kit, but—with the simple base model—we also want to encourage audiences to create their own variants or editions.

As you can see, the Rhino model comprises the basic elements of the case. It shows the rounded and beveled edges that follow a Victorian aesthetic, and it has been rendered to the size we require for the final kit. Again, details can be added during production and post-production: prior to fabrication, the desired box material can be selected; different types of silk or satin lining can be inserted; surface illustrations can be painted on or engraved; and hinges, ribbons, or knobs can easily be added.

For our first iteration, we decided to laser-cut the jewellery case with an Epilog Helix 40-watt laser. We cut the external components of the case from 6mm baltic birch, and the internal components consist of 3mm baltic birch.

While this prototype is a simpler, flattened version of the 3D model created in Rhino, such simplicity allows us to quickly construct materials that we can user-test with multiple audiences. Since we designed the case to encourage audiences to move through the kit in certain ways, explore it, immediately find some components, and search for other components, this user testing is essential to our research. For instance, we have included two “hidden” compartments in the bottom section of the kit. They hold historical materials and require some digging to locate. One compartment contains schematics and technical articles about the electric jewels from the period; the other compartment contains texts on jewellery etiquette as well as images of some of the women who modelled electro-mobile jewellery. User testing tells us whether these hidden compartments do in fact afford certain arguments about early wearables, or if the kit design should be revised and improved.

After cutting all the pieces, we stain them to give them a richer colour. Although we used baltic birch, which can be cut very easily with a laser, we wanted to follow the look of the Victorian jewel caskets we found, which mostly consisted of darker materials (often of lavish woods, such as mahogany and rosewood). To achieve a similar look, we chose a walnut wood stain. We then assembled the boxes using wood glue, clamps, and hinges.

We are currently finalizing all of the kit’s various parts, such as the guide, the milled skull, jewellery pin components, and an electromagnetic mechanism for moving the skull’s eyes and jaw.

Image of an early wearable kit care of Danielle Morgan and the MLab

While we plan to manufacture physical kits that can be mailed, we will—as I suggested earlier in this post—also make available digital files for all components of the kit, including the case. We are eager to see not only how our audiences will engage the complete kit, but also how they might modify, realize, and construct the kit using the digital models, descriptions, and historical media we provide. After all, our goal is not to tell people how early wearables were built. It is to prompt them to prototype versions of history through today’s materials and technologies.

Image of an early wearable kit care of Danielle Morgan and the MLab

Post by Nina Belojevic, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the fabrication and versioning tags. Images for this post care of Danielle Morgan. Sketches and videos created by Nina Belojevic.

While the SRM-20 is roughly the same size as the MakerBot Replicator we’ve been using, it relies on subtractive manufacturing, meaning you can place a solid piece of material (such as wood, styrofoam, or acrylic) in the miller and then drill the material according to a 3D model designed in any given CAD app. A digital model is translated into code, which the milling machine translates into the physical movement of a drill bit through space.

Although the SRM-20 is meant for use in studios, classrooms, and offices (that is, it is not an industrial milling machine), it’s still highly precise, drilling at a mechanical resolution of 0.000998594 mm/step. To mill pieces with such precision, we use a variety of drill bits. But for now, we are testing the machine with the default, 3mm cutting tools.

Using the SRM-20 requires a combination of software and materials design. Modela Player 4 is the intended app for preparing models. In it, an STL, IGES, DFX (3D), or Modela file is opened, and all specifications for the milling process (which consists of surface levelling, roughing, and finishing) need to be defined discretely and in detail. Once this preparation is completed, the material needs to be staged; that is, it’s prepared to fit inside the machine and placed on the milling bed. Prior to fabrication, the VPanel software is used to set the appropriate X, Y, and Z coordinates as well as the origin point in relation to the model. This way, the SRM-20 accurately fashions the 3D model out of the staged material.

Once we finish testing the Roland SRM-20, we are going to use it to make jewelry pieces for our early wearables kit. Last semester, Nicole hand-carved a wooden model of a skull piece, and a few weeks ago Shaun, Danielle, and Kat digitized it into a 3D model. This semester, using the SRM-20, we’ll fabricate that model in a size much smaller than Nicole’s wooden model but similar in size to the Victorian original.

Post by Nina Belojevic, attached to the KitsForCulture and Makerspace projects, with the fabrication tag. Featured images for this post care of Nina Belojevic.

When: Friday, February 27th, at 3:00pm
Where: The Maker Lab in the Humanities (Technology Enterprise Facility 243)
Register: Please email maker@uvic.ca.
Free to attend. No previous experience required.

Post by Nina Belojevic, attached to the Makerspace project, with the news tag. Featured image for this post from Jester Jacques Art. Poster for the event care of Nina Belojevic.

As we are developing these pieces and the corresponding materials we plan to include in the kit, we are also working on the wearable kit’s casing. In designing the case, we are striving to create a container that securely holds all content in place and can easily be mailed by post, while also modelling it so as to reference its historical and cultural context. This effort has led us to the following design approaches and decisions.

Victorian Aesthetic

While the case should be practical and durable, its aesthetic can also contextualize the early wearables kit in the historical period of Trouvé’s work. To do so, we decided to style the case as a jewel casket. After all, jewellery cases have existed for a very long time and took a variety of new shapes and forms during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Victorian jewel caskets were commonly made out of wood or metals (usually base metals such as spelter or antimonial lead) and then finished with gold, silver, ivory, or other painting and plating materials. A casket’s exterior was often decorated with engravings or figurines, while the inside was decorated with silk, satin, or velvet lining. For our jewel casket, we will likely follow some of these Victorian aesthetic traits by using wooden materials and engraving the box with decorative and informative details, including Trouvé’s famous pseudonym and signature, “L. Bienfait.”

Manufacturing Approach

In order to produce and distribute a number of our kits both online and via the post, we are modelling them using computer-aided design software and manufacturing them using laser cutters and CNC routers. While this approach might seem anachronistic for Victorian-era jewellery boxes, it actually relates to the history of jewellery boxes in interesting ways. During the late 19th century and into the early 20th century, jewellery pieces, small knickknacks, and decorative cases became increasingly available to a broad number of audiences. With the development of new manufacturing equipment and techniques, small pieces could be produced faster and cheaper than before. By extension, jewellery shifted from being a luxury that only a very small group of people could afford to a fashion accessory that was expected among certain circles and at certain occasions. For elegant storage, people acquired jewel caskets or smaller metal or porcelain trinket boxes to display on shelves in their home. While our methods and tools are clearly different from the ones used during the 19th century, our approach is similar in that we are also using technologies to allow for wider circulation, thereby making our pieces more readily available (or so we hope!) for production and use.

Structure and Use

In order to keep the content of the kit organized and secure, the jewellery box will contain removable and sliding compartments, lids, and drawers. While, in the late 19th century, small trinket boxes without compartments became increasingly popular for storing jewellery and other small pieces, jewel caskets with compartments and puzzle boxes also remained popular. Furthermore, display cases were often uniquely designed for specific jewellery pieces and showcased these piece in extravagant ways. By combining features of display cases with compartments, we hope to create a structure with layers of access in the box. The process of exploring the history of these electronic pieces and their cultural significance is in itself one of uncovering layers—certain stories are privileged over others; some information is easy to find, while some requires ample digging; certain people are celebrated, while other names are forgotten. By moving through the layers of access designed in the box, the audience will unpack layers of early wearable production.

Gendered Experience

The design and development of jewel caskets was premised on a gender binary whereby men made cases for women to store their jewellery, as in the example of the famous Castelli brothers, who made a case for Maria Pia as a wedding gift on her marriage to Luis I of Portugal. Based on this historical construction of gender and the expected role of women in using jewel caskets, audiences will interact with the case in ways remnant of such gender biases (which also persist today). While the intricacies of jewellery boxes (with their hidden compartments, levers, and drawers) might be familiar to some—especially women—many will likely be less familiar with the traditions of jewellery boxes, their hidden compartments, and their cultural significance. In this way, the experience of moving through the kit and engaging with it inherently draws attention to the construction of gender through material culture.

Right now, I’m in the process of narrowing down the design through sketches and 3D modelling in Rhino. I’m hoping a combination of the considerations and decisions outlined above will lead to a design that makes an persuasive argument and does not solely rely on written material to provide instructions on how to engage the kits or how to understand their relevance. In other words, we want to create a jewellery case that makes an embodied, procedural argument that the audience experiences as they assemble the kit. The design decisions listed here are four components that should help us communicate the relevance of Trouvé’s electric jewellery in the contexts of gender, manufacturing, access, and material culture.

Post by Nina Belojevic, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the fabrication tag. All images in this post care of Nina Belojevic.

Below’s the abstract for the article, which you can read in its entirety here. It is part of a special JEP issue on “Metrics for Measuring Publishing Value: Alternative and Otherwise.” We would like to thank INKE and the MVP for their support while conducting this research and writing the essay. Thanks, too, to Maria Bonn and Jonathan McGlone at JEP for their feedback and support during the revision process.

Arguing for the relevance of speculative prototyping to the development of any technology, this essay presents a “Peer Review Personas” prototype intended primarily for authoring and publication platforms. It walks audiences through various aspects of the prototype while also conjecturing about its cultural and social implications. Rather than situating digital scholarly communication and digital technologies in opposition to legacy procedures for review and publication, the prototype attempts to meaningfully integrate those procedures into networked environments, affording practitioners a range of choices and applications. The essay concludes with a series of considerations for further developing the prototype.

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0017.304

Post by Nina Belojevic, attached to the ModVers project, with the news tag. Image for this post care of the Journal of Electronic Publishing.

Photograph of the Early Wearables Kit, care of Danielle Morgan

Research Leads, Contributors, Support, and Partnerships

Kits for Cultural History is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Jentery Sayers and William J. Turkel are the project’s principal investigators. With Sayers and Turkel, Nina Belojevic, Nicole Clouston, Shaun Macpherson, and Katie McQueston, together with Teddie Brock, Tiffany Chan, Alex Christie, Laura Dosky, Devon Elliott, Katherine Goertz, Jon Johnson, Danielle Morgan, Victoria Murawski, and Zaqir Virani, have contributed to the project. The research is being conducted in the MLab in partnership with the Lab for Humanistic Fabrication at Western University. The researchers are based in departments of English, history, and visual arts, as well as the Cultural, Social, and Political Thought program at UVic.

Project Status

This project is ongoing, with substantial support through at least April 2017. During the 2013-14 academic year, early prototypes were developed for three different kits: an early wearables kit (on late 19th-century electric jewellery by Gustave Trouvé), an early video games kit (on William Higinbotham’s Tennis for Two), and an early wire recorder kit. During 2014-15, the team expanded development of the early wearables kit, producing replicas of Trouvé’s electric jewellery, modelling and manufacturing cases for the kit, gathering contextual materials, and articulating the kit’s scholarly apparatus. In 2015-16, the team completed and exhibited its early magnetic recording kit and also began developing its early optophonics kit. By 2018, the MLab will circulate a number of these open-source kits, which will be archived, peer-reviewed, and distributed online and by post. Several publications, including “Prototyping the Past” (Visible Language), “Kits for Cultural History, or Fluxkits for Scholarly Communication” (Hyperrhiz),  and “Why Fabricate?” (SRC), have already emerged from the project.

To stay in the loop with the Kits for Cultural History, follow the stream of posts below. We do our best to regularly publish logs of our work, and we are currently presenting this research at universities and conferences. Please do not hesitate to either comment on a log or email maker@uvic.ca with suggestions.

Post by Nina Belojevic, attached to the KitsForCulture project, with the projects tag. Images in this post care of Nina Belojevic, Shaun Macpherson, and Jentery Sayers. (This post was updated on 16 October 2016.)

The admittedly experimental theme of the popup makerspace was, “Whose Hand Am I Holding Anyway?” We used the space’s temporary infrastructure to draw public attention to the intricate relationships between bodies, data, immediacy, and distance in a “global” digital economy. We first cast hands in plaster and then—with anyone who stumbled upon the space—created silicon proxies of those hands. The proxies were embedded with sensors, and later in the conference we wrote an Arduino sketch to not only log when the sensors were triggered but also display messages via a serial readout. Conference participants could shake hands with these rather defamiliarizing proxies, an often amusing encounter that was immediately confirmed on a screen in the space. The handshake data was then logged so that we’d know, by the conference’s conclusion, how many people the proxies had “met.”

We also used the proxies to teach Arduino-based programming and “hands-on” prototyping, having a bit of fun with the hand as a fetish in maker communities. These creative activities also became opportunities to have some fascinating and lively conversations with people from around the world, including various regions of Peru, about the Internet of Things, data surveillance, the politics of making, material culture, and—more generally—the abstraction of data from bodies and social relations.

In short, our makerspace demonstration sought to provide a simplified example of how—as our behaviours are tracked, logged, and rendered value-productive across “intelligent” networks of communication—our very understanding of bodies and their edges is muddled. This scenario is cause for both fascination and concern.

A proxy together with a printed description of “Whose Hand Am I Holding Anyway?” at HASTAC 2014

Post by Nina Belojevic, Shaun Macpherson, Katie McQueston, and Jentery Sayers, attached to the Makerspace and HASTAC projects, with the news, fabrication, and physcomp tags. Images for this post care of Nina Belojevic, Shaun Macpherson, Katie McQueston, and Jentery Sayers.

As Shaun Macpherson and I argue elsewhere, in “Publish This Kit” Part I and Part II, the kits afford a form of tacit engagement that encourages audiences to reassemble historical technologies using current materials in order to better understand the material relationships between culture and media.

The presentation Jentery and I gave at HASTAC 2014 outlined the content of a typical kit, the principles of the kits project, and an example kit. Each kit will contain a combination of instructions and parts required for assembly. The instructions will not only provide an overview of actions required to reassemble a historical device; they will also describe how specific elements work as well as unpack how those elements are culturally embedded. Furthermore, the kits will contain contextual materials in print and/or digital formats. By developing kits that can be accessible in various formats—as both bits and atoms, if you will—we can circulate them in multiple ways: for example, as web-based scholarship, as physical objects to be delivered by post, and as elaborate kits that could be acquired through GLAM (Gallery, Library, Archive, and Museum) institutions, such as science and technology museums. This variety should also spark an array of counterfactual interpretations and prompt some serious speculation. (Curious about counterfactuals? Check out Kari Kraus’s research.)

Our decisions to assemble the kits this way are based on several key principles. We want to create scholarship that expands beyond more academically established forms of communication (such as writing) and uses the very materials, objects, and media it discusses to make a scholarly argument. By encouraging hands-on engagement with these materials, we hope that audiences will develop a material understanding of how certain mechanisms work and how their functionality is culturally significant. By situating the materiality of these devices in a historical context, the kits offer a way to politicize the role of forensics and archaeology in media studies, prompting audiences to better understand how the evidentiary value of objects is imbued with social and cultural significance. Here, the question is not what is inherently stored in a given device or medium, but rather how it got there in the first place and under what assumptions.

As an example of what such a kit might look like, at HASTAC 2014 we described our early wearables kit, which is based on the electronic jewellery pieces created by the nineteenth-century French engineer, physician, chemist, and scientific instrument maker, Gustave Trouvé. Trouvé designed intricate jewellery pieces that ranged from a light-up bird hairpin to a soldier beating a drum, a skull gnashing its teeth, a rabbit playing on a bell with drumsticks, and many more. The trick that set the movement going was no switch or button; it was simply turning the battery on its side or upside down. The skull and rabbit stick-pins worked for nine hours every day over six months and were still going even then. However, only a few of these pieces survive, since Trouvé was unable to find craftsmen who could make such small objects with the precision required and thus only created a small number of prototypes.

The early wearables kit replicates—but does not restore—these mechanisms by using materials and technologies readily available today. This year we have been working on a simple light-up filigree hairpin and a gnashing skull, which are being designed as 3D models to be fabricated using CNC milling machines, 3D printers, and laser cutters at UVic. These models and objects, together with other necessary components (e.g., LEDs, wires, and motors), will be included in an early wearables kit. While not wholly accurate in terms of its historical specificity, this approach in many ways makes possible what wasn’t in the nineteenth century, including the possibility of designing intricate jewellery through digital design and computer-controlled precision machinery.

The kits’ components will also explore the cultural contexts and discursive elements of early wearables. These materials work in a pedagogical manner by helping audiences assemble a circuit or mechanism while situating the wearable in history. For instance, a description of electrical current may also explain how the “hard” and “soft” distinctions between electricity and the materials that conduct it are informed by late nineteenth-century gender politics. The construction of the circuit may also make note of “male” and “female” connector pieces and other gendered terminology, and the design of the jewellery piece itself could speak to how the original devices were engineered to be exhibited on women’s bodies, rendering these bodies display objects for male innovation. Such instructions invite audiences to closely read the different materials and consciously work through the kit. In other words, the kits employ a humanities approach to technical literacy (or tinkering) that promotes reflexive building.

Post by Nina Belojevic, attached to the KitsForCulture and HASTAC projects, with the news, physcomp, and fabrication tags. Images for this post care of Nina Belojevic and Jentery Sayers.

A poster for the event is below, and the talk—“Bearing Digital Witness: The Humanities and the American Prison Complex”—is open to the public. Please spread the word (poster included) to anyone who might be interested.

See you on Tuesday the 25th at 11:30am in ECS 108, everyone! We are thrilled about this event and want to thank Doran Larson for taking the time to visit us.

Post by Nina Belojevic, attached to the BuildingPH project, with the news tag. Poster for the event care of Nina Belojevic and Jon Johnson.

Nina Belojevic and Shaun Macpherson Presenting Kits for Cultural History at UC San Diego (Photo by Sarah McCullough)

In order to communicate how the kits practically achieve our goals, we presented an early prototype at the WHA meeting. In the spirit of the kits series, we used a physical demonstration to convey how the project works and invites interpretation. The particular kit we used focuses on electric jewellery created by the nineteenth-century French engineer, Gustave Trouvé. In the 1870s and 1880s, Trouvé created illuminated brooches, diadems, and hat pins that were powered by two- to four-volt batteries. Although these pieces were initially designed for stage use, they quickly became fashionable in certain circles of Europe. Through this kit, we are using Trouvé’s work to unravel and historicize the very notion of “wearables” or “wearable technologies,” which are often associated with more contemporary research by “cyborg” practitioners such as Steven Mann.

For now, then, we are calling this kit our “early wearables” kit. It contains the parts required to construct a simple, battery-powered circuit that uses a small LED to illuminate a filigree hairpin. We also included supplementary materials, including pictures of women modelling Trouvé’s pieces, a handbill for a production of Faust (for which Trouvé created light-up swords), and instructional materials that explain the basic principles of circuitry. The instructional materials describe the functions and cultural significance of the parts in the kit, encouraging audiences to explore the historical contexts and discursive elements of early wearables.

Prototype of the Early Wearables Kit at UC San Diego (Photo care of Nina Belojevic and Shaun Macpherson)

As Shaun explains in “Publish This Kit (Part II),” the instructional materials work in a manner that encourages audiences to assemble the circuit while situating the mechanism in material history. In this kit, a description of electrical current also explains how the “hard” and “soft” distinctions between electricity and the materials that conduct it are informed by late nineteenth-century gender politics. The construction of the circuit makes note of “male” and “female” connector pieces and other gendered terminology, and the design of the jewelry piece itself speaks to how the original devices were engineered to be modelled on women’s bodies, rendering them display-objects for male innovation (a tradition that is ultimately bound up in the production of wearables). Rather than simply following instructions, audiences are thus prompted to gain a deeper understanding of wearable technologies and their contexts. In other words, the kits employ what might be understood as a humanities approach to technological literacy: they promote an attention to technical particulars while fostering self-reflexive building and a cultural awareness of mechanisms.

During the poster session at the WHA meeting, we had the wonderful opportunity to speak in person to a large number of attendees, who directly engaged our prototype; they picked it up, touched the component parts, and asked questions about the ways in which the elements would work together. These interactions gave us the opportunity to gauge the kind of scholarship the kits prompt. Once the participants were able to see, touch, and experience the kit, they also contributed insightful comments and questions for us to consider as we further develop the project: What is the scholarly apparatus of the kits? How will they be disseminated? How will they be used? How (if at all) will they intersect with other modes of scholarly communication, including journal articles and monographs?

Prototype of the Early Wearables Kit at UC San Diego (Photo care of Nina Belojevic and Shaun Macpherson)

As we continue to work on the kits, we will keep in mind the ways they can function as a form of scholarly argumentation. The kits attempt to circumvent the critical risks associated with technological determinism by integrating actual objects and material processes into scholarly communication. For example, in a field like comparative media studies, one could imagine a journal article that walks audiences through the assembly of a kit and, in doing so, digs into the material particulars of a historical mechanism. Such an article would demand attention to the page or screen as well as the physical content of a kit. Since we also consider the kits relevant to settings beyond academic campuses (e.g., public museums and other memory institutions), the procedures at work in them enact arguments distinct from what’s achievable via the screen or page alone.

Post by Nina Belojevic in the KitsForCulture category, with the news, physcomp, and fabrication tags. Photographs in this post care of Nina Belojevic, Shaun Macpherson, and Sarah McCullough. The “Boxed Anthologies” poster (top of page) was made by the Maker Lab Research Team, influenced by Fluxus.