BAJ Podcast

Since 2020 Sofie Boons has been collaborating with a physicist and crystal grower as part of her, recently completed, doctoral research. Her collaborator, Daniel Rytz, has been active in the field of crystals for optical, piezoelectric and other applications since 1977. In 2012, together with his partner Corinne Siegrist, he founded BREVALOR as a platform to develop crystals with novel properties for ornamental applications. One of the innovations he has been working on, are phosphorescent crystals. The materials BRG and BRB have similar properties to classical gemstones: their hardness allows them to be shaped and facetted, and they have the optical appearance of gems. This light-emitting gemstone material, capable of storing energy and generating its own light, is taking the quest to optimise light reflection in gemstones to a whole new dimension. In this episode, Sofie and Daniel discuss his career, the subject of crystal growth and his thoughts on the future of these and other novel materials for the jewellery industry.

Our bodily presence in the world is likely of ever greater interest to artists, designers and makers in our increasingly digitally navigated context. What it feels like to engage with the physical world and how this influences our understanding of it has been the subject of investigation in theories such as phenomenology dating back to the early 20th century. Of continued relevance today, as designers we ask ourselves what it feels like to wear jewellery, how does it respond or relate to the movements of our body, and can jewellery be in artistic dialogue with these motions, highlighting the human body and its interactions with the world? This approach can encourage us to create jewellery that resonates on a sensory and emotional level, making the experience of wearing the piece as significant as the piece itself. A jewellery artist who has been fascinated by these contemplations, and who has collaborated with choreographers, dancers, musicians, filmmakers and scientists to investigate, create and capture movement narratives, is John Moore. His work challenges traditional boundaries, positioning the wearer as an active participant in the jewellery’s expression. Join us to find out more about his work and what it means to design for movement.

Tiia Vahula and Philip Wilck, founders of Utopia Blu aim to embrace the boundless potential of human imagination, whilst striving for a future that is not only visually appealing but also sustainable and meaningful. Breaking disciplinary boundaries, the couple look to technology to enable creative innovations that strike the right balance between culture and nature. For this podcast episode we review how the self-proclaimed formalists have been nourishing an ability to envision sensitive possibilities, finding inspiration in nature whilst advocating for progress, by exploring emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality, to create transformative experiences that blend seamlessly with the physical world.

When considering alternative approaches to materials and making, you may come across Bio-design, which can be understood as a means to incorporate the inherent life-conducive principles of biological living systems into the design and making process - and this in order to move towards a more sustainable and caring future. If we want to become more empathic towards our environment, so we can co-create, collaborate with non-humans whilst constructing and most importantly improving our context, wouldn’t it be important we gain an understanding of these living systems first? What does the world feel like to a tree? And can jewellery provide an ecological service to our environment? Someone who has asked themselves these very questions, and many more questions in relation to the topic of bio-design, is researcher, designer and artist Yuning Chen. Join us in this episode, where she tells us more about her career, practice and the materials she’s been investigating as part of her projects.

Gold, as we know it best, is not really a material that gets distributed fairly, or even gets worked on in cooperation. But there is archaeological evidence for spectacular goldwork in stateless societies providing compelling proof that complex technologies could be sustained in the absence of coercive powers. With cooperation being a key to tackling some of our greatest global concerns, and fair distribution of materials such as gold and access to luxurious objects an ethical ambition, this should pique our interest. This month we speak to a researcher who has been tracing our fascinating relationship with gold and other luxurious materials in various places and across segments of time. Professor Marcos Martinón-Torres is the Pitt-Rivers Professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Cambridge and researches the archaeology of alchemy and metals, investigating different forms of craft organisation, knowledge transmission, innovation, and value systems. We speak to him about his research, and how looking back can maybe inspire moving forward.

In a world full of objects, and as makers of objects, the agency of objects and materials is fascinating. Why do certain objects become valuable to us, and others not? Today sustainable making is a key consideration, and waste poses a real sustainability challenge. Are there opportunities in waste? Can we re-consider waste sensitively, incorporating it into our practices as tools, materials and actors? A maker who has been fascinated with the temporality of materials is Katy Gillam-hull. A maker of objects and jewellery who reflects upon found and archival materials and objects and their capacity for encounter and for accumulating narrative through time. In this episode we talk about her views on waste, ponder materials and their stories, and delve into her practice, where waste is not wasted.

Our senses are the filters to our universe. Jewellery, unlike other artforms, is often worn on the body, engaging most of our senses. Some jewellery designers explore the edges of our sensory exploration of the world, questioning what it is we can and cannot see, or feel - or enabling a beauty to be sensed only in certain conditions. A jewellery designer who aims to explore how the multi-sensory experience of wearing and viewing jewellery can be changed with the enhancement of light as an interactive medium is Wanshu Li. In this podcast episode we discuss how her work attempts to challenge the traditional way that people wear and interact with jewellery by exploring the relationship between materiality and sensory experiences, using traditional and digital techniques.