Privacy protecting jewelry at ArtWear exhibit

Photo by Fjodor Buis

A new exhibit on modern jewerly called ArtWear has opened in the Vishal in Haarlem, the Netherlands. Amongst the bracelets, and necklaces you'll also find the devices Dinie Besem's created for Candle. A fine dust sensor, a carbon dioxide sensor, a weather station and a Candle controller, all designed in Besem's organic and sensual style. 

Dinie imagined a home where its inhabitants always keep the devices covered in 'skirts', and only lift the skirts when they actually want to know the values. It can become a ritual, a concious choice, to look at your own data. As we increasingly learn how smart home devices can harm the social fabric of families, this becomes exceedingly relevant attitude to foster.

We're all used to blocking our laptop webcams with privacy protecting sliders. Dinie, however, took this concept further, and applied it to smart home devices. These often have displays that show current data values. There are situations where you'd want to hide those values. For example, you might want to hide the values of the fine dust sensor if you haven't vacumed in a few days and your mother-in-law pays a surprise visit. 

Jewelry has always had a connotation of intimacy. But so do our homes. Dinie's creations explore that similarity. Through her skirts she developed a brilliantly simple way to regain some control over how we increasingly present ourselves through our data.

The exhibit was curated by Sylvia Blickman en Margriet Blom, together with Haarlem's Jewelry Collective. It's open until the 6th of September. A teaser video can be found on Youtube.