I’m remixing my first exploration, the 3D-printed shell charm for a bracelet. I thought it would be fun to manufacture more tangible materials and wearable objects. I recalled a sculptural object I once saw in someone’s DIY studio in London:
I like the levitation effect that magnets can create, and I imagined jewelry that might utilize magnets to levitate adornments around the body, without leaning on it or touching it.
When discussing the idea with Amber and Annika, Annika suggested making an earring. I imagined a remix of the classic elf ears accessory with 3D-printed magnet-implanted pieces levitating over the head like such:
I imagine the jewelry to be printed with black PLA in its prototypic form, then later printed with craters that can be filled with gemstones and other fun stuff. If I had more time I would order some levitation-effect-achieving magnets and try to implant them in the 3D-printed wearables.
In thinking about extremes, Amber suggested I make a line of wearables and then another line of non-wearables. She described the non-wearables as jewelry with floating magnets that cannot be worn and only functions as aesthetic sculpture or on a model in a photoshoot. I liked the idea of accompanying utility with obsolescence, or futility. This concept led me to the idea of non-wearable jewelry whose form is solely sonic.
I thought about the sonic value of jewelry. When I was little, I loved how older women around me moved with a cacophony of clangs and jingles as their bracelets moved with them. I also realized that I thought about how I wanted to make this (perhaps femme-coded, from my nostalgia) noise when I decided to start wearing the charm bracelet from Exploration 01 again a couple months ago.
So, next week when I have the time, I want to design sonic jewelry. These could be recordings or imitations of familiar jewelry sounds, but they could also be sonically unrelated to the typical sounds of jewelry. For example, one could “wear” a twinkly melody or a bass-heavy beat. Imagine, as you choose your outfit in the morning, you can also choose to put on a sound that those in near proximity to you can hear.
I suppose the sound would have to come from something physical, like a small speaker. People have been enacting sonic jewelry for a long time in a way (think boom box carried on the shoulder in the 80s and 90s) but not explicitly calling it jewelry or considering sound as an accessory like handbags and hats.
Music is a form of expressing one’s identity, but I imagine this non-wearable jewelry line as sound that is not bluntly musical. It could be more sounds that fade in and out throughout the day. The sounds could be emitted from the places on the body where jewelry is traditionally worn: wrists, ankles, neck, ears, nostrils, fingers, toes, etc.
I hope to make both lines, the wearable magnetic floating jewelry and the non-wearable sonic jewelry, in the coming weeks.
Here is a first attempt (.wav files not supported on WP):
Over the course of the semester, I have learned that, contrary to my preconception of myself of a spiraling and stuck procrastinator, I can arrive at my creations and my ideas through quickly moving through iterations of ideas and the crafting process in a hands-on way. I have also learned that I can enter my process at different points, such as fun, form, content, or randomly generated ideas, and that I can trust that the meaning of the work will make itself known to me regardless of the point at which I entered the making process. I was worried before about making meaning, and meaning that I deemed important or thought-provoking, out of my work. I can see that I am naturally provoked to think, and so I don’t have to worry so much about this, and also that it’s okay not to think so much:)
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