The Final Outcome!!! azAura..

azAura

Artist Statement

This jewelry piece is made for the wearer that wants to be centre of attention by expressing their emotional and physical state. When relaxed and still the necklace glows in deep blue colours and with an increase of movement, excitement or irritation the colours move though the spectrum to a luminous red. Aesthetically inspired by the Aztecs, its abstract take is for the bold fashionista or someone who just wants to express them self.

Project Description

The inspiration for this project began with the mood ring; together we wanted to create a piece that reflected the emotional state with colour. The mood ring changes colour according to the temperature of the body so we decided that a temperature sensor would be a part of our original concept. To express the emotional state we wanted to use rgb led’s and have them move around the colour spectrum according to the wearers’ emotional state.


Aesthetically we came up with the concept to create something that reflected the look of the Aztec age in an abstract and simplified way. Having decided on our technical and aesthetic intention we had to decide what sort of piece we wanted to make. Keeping in line with the fact our inspiration was the mood ring we also wanted to make a piece of jewelry of some sort, we eventually decided on a necklace and then started our technical trials with the Arduino and the temperature sensor.


After trialing a Lilypad temperature sensor we found that that it did not give us enough variance and quick enough change in data and would prove unsuccessful for our project so we had to rethink our sensor. We chose to use an accelerometer, as the physical movement data we got from it would be the best alternative way to reflect emotional state. This would also mean adding an extra dynamic to the project, as the necklace would now reflect physical and emotional state.


Working out the coding and final aesthetic of the necklace was the next step. Getting the code to work how we wanted was the most challenging part but was eventually achieved. Increase in movement meant that the necklace would glow red and would move down the colour spectrum to blue when relaxed and still. After a number of material experiments and ideas about how the necklace would be made up we decided on a clear 5mm thick acrylic that would be cut into six different sized triangles that would be arranged around a circular container. This container would house the electronic components to result in a pendant to hang from a leather string.


We chose the name ‘azAura’ to reflect the projects function and aesthetic. The first part ‘az’ refers to the Aztec aesthetic intention and ‘Aura’ to represent the emotional and physical state the wearer is projecting.


Overall we are happy with the final outcome, if we had more time we would have made the code more sensitive to movement otherwise we feel like it has resulted in a successful project.


Sam Atmore, Jon Neylon and Abby Potich