Ensemble- an interactive collection of networked jewellery, with gesturally determined, real time musical output

Ensemble is an interactive suite of jewellery to be experienced by up to ten people within a gallery environment, which provides an alternative, ambigious style of interaction in wearable computing. It explores the issue of user control of personal information in social interactions, and highlights ways in which self-determination may take place through the medium of sound. Short narratives recorded by wearers are more or less masked by dynamic musical output, which in turn is determined by a number of factors taking place in the social interaction, including gestural, vocal and biometric. Furthermore, the functional element of the jewellery is approached as a design material, inevitably carrying expression just as the more common visual and tactile aspects do. Thus the contemporary crafts bsaed design process seeks to make use of the constraints and opportunities presented by the novel 'Speckled Computing' enabling interaction, in the same way that it seeks to create fresh expressions through those materials used at the workbench.