Jewelers explore the benefits of digital art

Next year, Bulgari will celebrate the 75th anniversary of its iconic Serpenti Tubogas bracelets, which have encircled the wrists of the rich and famous since Elizabeth Taylor made them coveted worldwide by wearing one on set during filmingCleopatrain 1962. But while a simple retrospective seemed to be the order of the day to mark this milestone, the Italian jeweler has instead teamed up with AI digital sculpture pioneer Refik Anadol to kick off its celebrations in London this month.

The jeweler commissioned the artist to create an immersive installation hosted by the Saatchi Gallery in London, following his visit to Piazza Duomo in Milan last year. The installation Serpenti Metamorphosis features digital artworks controlled by artificial intelligence – which Anadol refers to as “Charlie”.

More than 200 million images of nature were fed into “Charlie,” and machine learning was used to create a wavy image that mimics nature’s textures to convey the serpentine evolution. Projected in an enclosed space, the experience is multisensory, with an AI-generated nature soundtrack accented with scent clouds created by Anadol in collaboration with Swiss perfumer Firmenich. The formula for the fragrance itself was suggested by “Charlie” after processing 500,000 odor molecules.

"I feel like it's truly a dream state; a state that I don't believe exists in the physical world," Anadol says of the immersive Bulgari experience. “It’s a completely algorithmic reality that doesn’t exist but feels very tangible.” More than just acting as a branding exercise, Anadol says he hopes Serpenti Metamorphosis will inspire feelings of "hope and positivity" toward "technology for humanity."

As technologies like AI open up creative possibilities and the metaverse becomes a more enticing arena for luxury brands, more and more jewelers are experimenting with ways to transplant one of the oldest hard luxury items into the digital world via digital art.

Jewelry brand Francis de Lara has collaborated with fashion platform Brand New Vision to create non-fungible tokens of its genuine gem-encrusted gold-plated silver glasses. These digital works of art can be worn across Metaverse worlds, including Decentraland, where a treasure hunt took place for users to find and win a pair of the limited edition Eve glasses, decorated with virtual Zambian emeralds and Mozambican rubies that mirrored the real-world counterparts mined by Gemfields. Gem mining company Greenland Ruby has also digitized its gemstones and collaborated with artist and jeweler Reena Ahluwalia to turn her “Fire Under Ice” painting of one of its stones into an NFT. It was put up for sale on OpenSea, the most popular platform for buying and selling digital collectibles, to raise funds for the miner's PinkPolarBear Foundation, which supports polar research.

Jewelers have turned directly to specific digital communities to ingratiate themselves.

Los Angeles-based jeweler Neil Lane collaborated with Audrey Schilt, the fashion illustrator and creator of Ralph Lauren's famous teddy bear character, to adorn one of the digital bears she is releasing on Collab Bears, the NFT website she co-founded.

Meanwhile, Tiffany & Co made a splash when it made its NFT debut in August exclusively with the CryptoPunk community, whose members collect a specific style of pixelated avatars. For 30 Ethereum apiece, the jeweler turned 250 CryptoPunks avatars into custom necklaces, made as both NFTs and real gold, diamond, and gemstone pieces.

On August 3rd, 100 people received early access and the entire run sold out just two days later. It netted the jeweler somewhere in the region of $12 million based on the cryptocurrency price at the time.

Sarah Ysabel Dyne-Narici, a New York-based jewelry designer, didn't have to look far to find a digital artist to transform one of her LoverGlyphs rings into a moving image. Her cousin, British-Singaporean artist Kara Chin, personalized the gold rings Dyne-Narici makes with hieroglyph-inspired symbols that tell her customers' life stories. In the artwork created with Chin, every symbol and gem explodes and becomes an object.

It took the cousins ​​three weeks to create this "passion project," and Dyne-Narici says she recognizes digital art's ability to present the old-world creativity of handcrafted jewelry to new eyes. “Given the nature of precious materials, physical pieces are inherently limited – scarce,” she says. "However, digital art is the opposite; it enables a connection with a wider audience. It is the sharing of the universe on a larger scale. For me, it is about presenting objects through a different lens. Capturing a universe in a tiny object is exciting, but so is experiencing that universe digitally. Both are different languages ​​expressing the same vision."

Indeed, most jewelers working with digital artists today are not concerned with favoring one art form over another or eschewing traditional craftsmanship in favor of futuristic fantasy. Instead, it's simply about exploring new possibilities and creative worlds - online or offline - where the two can sit side by side.

Just as Anadol's Serpenti Metamorphosis aims to transport visitors beyond everyday life into a world of AI-generated escapism, the same exhibition will later ground them with solid objects that are physical touchpoints in history by showcasing Bulgari Serpenti jewels from the 1940s to modern day.

“In this project, the two disciplines become one and the same,” says Bulgari boss Jean-Christophe Babin. "What we wanted to achieve is a true metamorphosis of the luxury experience through art - which can be understood as both jewelry art and digital art by Refik Anadol. Throughout history, luxury and art have often met, creating exciting combinations, mixes and solutions that audiences have always appreciated. The same applies today to art and luxury 4.0; they must continue the dialogue in new forms that reflect a new society and experiment with unprecedented forms of expression of beauty."