A Sensory Process
Connecting through craft
Our process has developed through years of collaborative research and experimentation. It combines analogue and digital photography with jewellery making to give tangible meaning to people's virtual networks.
Through a series of activities, participants map the ways that SIM cards connect them to friends, family and places.
We have run workshops in 8 countries to date.
‘People migrate from one place to another, and as they move, their bonds of love with the place they come from continue like spider webs.’
Mahide, Turkish Poet, Bristol 2023
Mobile darkrooms
Participants select an image from the archive on their phone, a ‘screenshot with a story’. Their digital image is transferred to a SIM-scale model, made of the same 0.7 mm glass as smartphones screens, using nineteenth-century photographic methods.
The portable dark room process disrupts the automatised nature of the smartphone and renders each artwork unique.
Networked jewellery
The final stage is to finish and polish the delicate metal frame, which holds the glass image and is etched with the project QR code. This is manually stamped with a number of personal significance individualising each artefact.
Each participant makes one piece to add to the project archive and another to keep and wear, in this way the project becomes a living, moving exhibition.
‘This image reminds me every time I look at my phone that dreams and reality are just a home screen away’
Boyka, mother of 2, Athens 2022
