Works
Curious Transpositions
A New York City Jewellery Week 2021 Virtual Exhibition Project
Most Drum & Bass tracks are around 174 beats per minute.
For years now, the biggest source of inspiration for my jewellery is electronic dance music, specifically a subgenre known as Drum & Bass. Something that makes Drum & Bass stand out from other genres is its speed – most Drum & Bass tracks are around 174 beats per
minute.
I chose the title Curious Transpositions because my previous work had always been a form of transposition or translation of the music into a third dimension, but this project went a slightly different way:
When the pandemic hit, I found myself looking for community (like many of us) in online spaces. One of my favourite DJs (El Hornet from Pendulum) began live streaming DJ sets on a platform called Twitch, and I immediately became a regular viewer. Having never really
been to clubs and festivals before, this was a fascinating opportunity to learn about DJing, a foundational part of the electronic dance music scene, and I wanted to try and find a way of combining this new knowledge with my artistic practice. I came up with the idea of hosting my own live streamed DJ set, while wearing jewellery made specially for NYCJW21. I prepared a setlist of songs to play, and chose them by title, looking for songs that could be associated with jewellery, the goldsmithing process, or other parts of my artistic practice. The new work made for the event explored the method of mixing – blending one song into the next in a gradual way – one of simplest methods of DJing.
minute.
I chose the title Curious Transpositions because my previous work had always been a form of transposition or translation of the music into a third dimension, but this project went a slightly different way:
When the pandemic hit, I found myself looking for community (like many of us) in online spaces. One of my favourite DJs (El Hornet from Pendulum) began live streaming DJ sets on a platform called Twitch, and I immediately became a regular viewer. Having never really
been to clubs and festivals before, this was a fascinating opportunity to learn about DJing, a foundational part of the electronic dance music scene, and I wanted to try and find a way of combining this new knowledge with my artistic practice. I came up with the idea of hosting my own live streamed DJ set, while wearing jewellery made specially for NYCJW21. I prepared a setlist of songs to play, and chose them by title, looking for songs that could be associated with jewellery, the goldsmithing process, or other parts of my artistic practice. The new work made for the event explored the method of mixing – blending one song into the next in a gradual way – one of simplest methods of DJing.
4D
a collaboration between Nicholas Thayer and Emma Gregory
For this exhibition, I created 15 individual brooches each acting as a score for the tracks on Nick’s 2022 album Tetramer. Using my own visual style and writing system of laser-welded stainless steel wire and minute details, I transformed Nick’s music into wearable scores with a minimalist colour pallet.
Polyrythmic (2018)
Masters graduation work from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp
I learned about artists who have played with the rules of traditional scoring, as well as those who invented completely new ways of transcribing music.
My masters degree began with the intention of figuring out how to transform electronic dance music into jewellery. My research focused on artists who had historically let music influence their art, as well as traditional musical notation and its variations. This research led me to discover a huge variety of alternative scores and writing systems used to communicate music in a visual way, along with a list of visual artists and painters who made efforts to transcribe music in their paintings such as Paul Klee and Kandinsky.
A masterclass by Jo De Baerdemaeker while I was a student at the Academy allowed me to develop a writing system based on visual elements from music production software and digital audio workstations, which I incorporated into my work alongside the patterns and movements within music. I was also able to audit a masters course on electronic music production at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Antwerp, and learned even more about the process of music production, always looking for elements I could use in my practice such as
FM Synthesis and ADSR curves.
My reason for choosing electronic dance music as my specific source of inspiration came from observations regarding the similarity between dance music and (contemporary) jewellery, particularly in their ‘outsider’ status among the fine arts, as well as their connection to the human body and its movements. Music and jewellery can both play an important part in our personal identity and how we express ourselves in society, sending messages about who we are and what matters to us out into the world. My work is predominately made using laser-welded stainless steel, a technique and a material considered by many to be ‘untraditional’ within the world of jewellery. Electronic dance music is also considered ‘untraditional’ in many respects within the world of music, which inspired this method of making my work.
A masterclass by Jo De Baerdemaeker while I was a student at the Academy allowed me to develop a writing system based on visual elements from music production software and digital audio workstations, which I incorporated into my work alongside the patterns and movements within music. I was also able to audit a masters course on electronic music production at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Antwerp, and learned even more about the process of music production, always looking for elements I could use in my practice such as
FM Synthesis and ADSR curves.
My reason for choosing electronic dance music as my specific source of inspiration came from observations regarding the similarity between dance music and (contemporary) jewellery, particularly in their ‘outsider’ status among the fine arts, as well as their connection to the human body and its movements. Music and jewellery can both play an important part in our personal identity and how we express ourselves in society, sending messages about who we are and what matters to us out into the world. My work is predominately made using laser-welded stainless steel, a technique and a material considered by many to be ‘untraditional’ within the world of jewellery. Electronic dance music is also considered ‘untraditional’ in many respects within the world of music, which inspired this method of making my work.
Waveforms
Waveforms & Chromatic Modulations Series
Waveform: The shape of a sound in relation to time.
During the production process of creating electronic dance music, as well as while DJ-ing, songs are often viewed as waveforms – a graph of the amplitude (intensity) of the song over time. These forms allow the DJ or producer to see an overview of the track structure,
including when the main parts are compared to the in-between sections. In this series I re-create waveforms of various tracks out of laser-welded stainless steel and (sometimes) a colourful nano-ceramic e-coating.
The shape of the waveform appears when the necklace is folded in half, and becomes abstract when the piece is worn; in the same way that headphones conceal the song of the listener to the viewer, so the mystery of the music being worn is maintained as a secret to
the wearer.
including when the main parts are compared to the in-between sections. In this series I re-create waveforms of various tracks out of laser-welded stainless steel and (sometimes) a colourful nano-ceramic e-coating.
The shape of the waveform appears when the necklace is folded in half, and becomes abstract when the piece is worn; in the same way that headphones conceal the song of the listener to the viewer, so the mystery of the music being worn is maintained as a secret to
the wearer.
