The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) has announced it will host a three-day symposium to discuss issues surrounding jewelry design and manufacturing.

The event, Digital Meets Handmade: Jewelry in the 21st Century, will be held May 15–17 at FIT and is a partnership between the college and Politecnico di Milano, Italy’s largest technical university. It hopes to spark a discussion that “is intended to propose reflection on the production and distribution processes for jewelry,” according to an FIT statement.

Topics to be explored include: the various implications of digital versus handmade in the context of social media; how jewelry that integrates digital and handmade fabrication will be valued in the future; how the integration of digital technology affects sustainability; and the didactics of jewelry as an applied art, through the use of critical analysis and discovery.

“There has been a seismic shift in jewelry design and manufacturing in recent years,” reads the statement. “As digital design and model-making have sped up the process, they have proven…invaluable. But every tool—hand-held or digital—leaves its mark. This symposium will provide an arena for debate on how digital technology and [the handmade] duel for influence in the aesthetics, the use, and the cultural contexts of jewelry as both a manufactured product and as an applied art form.”

(Top image: jewelry designs curated by FIT’s Wendy Yothers, via: @FITNYC)