George Lucas called it the “used future.” He created an image of a lived-in, used-up, dingy and dirty world where obscure objects, oil-stained furniture, and beat-up technology look like they came from the opposite sides of the galaxy.

To create an altogether more credible image of the future—where young and ancient civilizations coexist, feeding off of each other—CGI artists and animators spend tremendous effort denting, burning, and bending surfaces of their pristine computer-generated spaceships. They know that whatever it is that viewers see on their screens, no matter how far removed from anything “real”, needs to be deeply rooted in our experience of objects and matter.

For a moment, lets allow the free-floating animated spaceships tickle our collective imagination, and look closer at the things that are deeply embedded in our history, identity, and self-expression. Things like jewelry.

Historically, the entire value system of jewelry is based on its materiality and its tangibility. Seen as an investment, it is above all a possession—an object to own, to hold, and to inherit. But how does this value system play out when the materiality of a work is taken out of the equation? What happens when jewelry becomes digital, existing in an entirely different realm, taking on a life of its own?

This may seem like a speculative scenario, but the existence of screen-bound jewels raises all kinds of very real questions. What is ownership and what is authorship? What is uniqueness? What is luxury? What is wearability and materiality?

An oily fingerprint depicted on the perfect facet of a rendered diamond, a curly hair stuck in the prong of a 3-D–rendered ring, a deep scratch on the smooth surface of digital metal, or a tiny stone missing from a geometric binary pavé …

If it takes a thoughtful representation of “old” and “new” objects welded-slash-copy-pasted from the opposite sides of the imaginary galaxy to convince the viewer to accept a far-fetched utopian scenario, perhaps hyper-real renders of jewelry can become a part of our digital and analogue lives, and work to bring these what-if futures into our now.

Symposium setup

Our attempt is to reflect this speculative theme in the format of the Symposium by introducing an innovative way of conducting a group discussion. The audience will be presented with tools to give feedback and influence the discussion in real time, digitally expressing their emojions: love, like, confused, dislike, etc. The group discussion will also be joined by a chatbot designed by Current Obsession as a representation of the collective knowledge about jewellery, without an agenda.

What defines authorship and authenticity in today’s digitalized world, when social content, images, memes, and quotations get dispersed to and by the masses? If we can think beyond the notion of copyright and ownership, what opportunities does this reality entail for (post-digital) artists and designers? This symposium is an attempt to elaborate on these questions, and discover and imagine what it could mean for jewelry.

This experimental event is designed to maximize the ‘mind-mining’ of the invited experts. Transposed over the traditional “social club” setup – a horizontal conversation between the moderator, invited speakers, and the public – the experience will receive new, digital layers.

In the first panel we meet an interesting combination of jewelry designers, artists and theorists whose approach to the subject matter come from different galaxies. Topics feeding the discussion include dispersion, representation, appropriation, plagiarism, file sharing, and inauthenticity.

In the second session, we will collectively examine a future scenario that could be post-human or human. What happens if the algorithm (or machine) takes over, leaving the designer out of the equation? Will we become designosauruses? In this session we will share our thoughts on Artificial Intelligence, machine- and deep-learning, and what this means for “the maker.” 
As panelists, the audience, the oracle and the Current Obsession team,we will collectively research possible outcomes, and try to inspire new jewelry designers and trigger other disciplines.