A Sensory Process
Our process has developed through years of research and experimentation. It combines analogue and digital photography with jewellery making to give tangible meaning to personal digital archives.
In the workshops, participants trace the ways their phone images connect them to people, places, and moments. From this constellation, they choose one image.
‘I carried the flower in my notebook from Mazar-i-Sharif airport as a memory, when I left my country, my family and my career the day after the Taliban takeover.’
Judge, Afghanistan and London, 2022
The SIMCAM
Our custom-built camera with handmade bellows rewinds the history of photography. People optically transfer their digital images to SIM-scale plates, made of the same 0.7 mm glass as smartphone screens, using nineteenth-century photographic methods.
The SIMPOD
The 3D-printed mobile darkroom, equipped with a red light and a window, allows people to watch their images appear in miniature tanks. The chemical process renders each piece unique.
Networked jewellery
The final step is to hand-stamp a personally meaningful number onto our registered metal frame, echoing the SIM’s International Identification Number.
Everyone makes one pendant to add to the touring collection and another to keep and carry. In this way the project becomes a living, moving exhibition.
‘I keep my SIM card in my wallet as a reminder of a place and a past life that I am not able to reach’
School bus driver, Sudan and Greece, 2022
