Tag Archives: audiowear
Elasticbrand does Audiowear
photo by Louise te Poele
We perhaps all have friends at this point who have used Kickstarter if not used it ourselves. My friends and fellow Cranbrook Academy of Art alumns, Christie and Arjen of Elasticbrand, created a Kickstarter project last year to fund a project that combines art and fashion in a completely new way: ceramic musical jewelry. WTF And just in case you wanted to dismiss this as artsy-fartsy wackness they offered their jewelry to hip-hop artists to create original pieces using them. Insane brilliance or brilliant insanity? I don’t know which, but I needed to learn more about it.
AUDIOWEAR PHASES OVERVIEW:
1. Concept, design drawings and 3D modeling of the objects while still in Brooklyn, NY
2. Move to the European Ceramic Work Center where we took up residence for 3 months, 3D printed the models and engineered the moulds and contra-moulds, and ultimately casted lustered and fired the collection
3. Organized photoshoot in Arnhem Art Academy with fashion and fine art photographer Louise te Poele.
4. Worked with 22 hip hop and other musicians who used sounds from the pieces in original songs to form a full length album
5. Organized a concert at the Museum of Arts & Design in NYC who also purchased the entire Audiowear line for their permanent collection.
6. Production of a series of music videos for the songs on the LP make the project endure into its second year.
Arjen gave me the “Christie-approved” answers to my questions!
What inspired you to make ceramic musical jewelry?
Did you create different prototypes before settling on certain sounds?
We decided we wanted a series of 6 pieces and sketched different ideas until we settled on those six, then we had them rendered in 3D and once we printed out the 3D models we spent most of the time on engineering the moulds, that is far more complex than you might think due to shrinkage, claywall thicknesses and more, that’s really where all the experimentation time we had was allotted to.
Are there issues with breaking and if so how do you handle that?
Sure, porcelain can break, however they are actually very strong. Unless you hit a piece against something hard it won’t break, so wearing it on the body is surprisingly safe. They are intended more as collectable art objects than as day to day wearables. We had rappers perform wearing the whistle necklace and break dancers wearing various pieces, nothing broke, until one dancer happened to wear two pieces at once and hit them against each other. The pieces are not meant to go clubbing with but they are stronger than you think!
Artist: Rising Sun Quest, Produced by Dirt E. Dutch
Song: I’ll Rhyme Now
Album: “Audiowear” by Elasticbrand
Directed by: Arjen Noordeman, Elasticbrand
DP: Steve Dassas
Mastered by Eric Bassriel of Little Ax Media
Dancers: DaRebels, The Netherlands
Model: Kimberly Brown
Was the idea of working with hip-hop musicians in your mind when you began and if so, did this play into the designs of the pieces at all. (i.e. bling?)
Not really, other than the fact that hip hop aesthetics are something that is always on my mind of course. The whistle necklace is the piece I really fought for because I loved the reference to both the gold chain and the toughness that represents while making it lighthearted by also including the nod to the referee whistle. The diamond bracelet also goes well with the hip-hop context however this piece came more out of Christie’s love for chunky and iconic jewelry.
We first worked with Skooby Laposky who is a DJ who mostly makes atmospheric electronic music. After that we proceeded to create a full length album and mostly worked with hip hop artists for two reasons: 1) it made sense to work with sample based musicians since the instruments can’t be tuned and this way I could send them a collection of sounds that they could manipulate more easily to create a composition out of them, and 2) that’s where we had the most connections. Michael Hearst of Brooklyn band One Ring Zero who did the last track on the record is the one notable exception to this because he is was the only musician who played all the pieces himself.
How did you find the other musicians that you worked with?
I had been creating some music videos for various hip hop artists from New York and Connecticut in my spare time, in the 2-3 years leading up to this, so it made sense to approach them to see if they were interested in participating in the Audiowear project. The exceptions were: Kalae All Day who I saw on StyleDefinedNYC years ago, I dug her style and then looked up her music which is also amazing, then was able to invite her through her management. La Melodia from Amsterdam is a duo we saw on local TV here and we were very happy to be able to include them, and lastly Tribeca is a well respected MC from the Bronx, whom I had heard doing some features, I connected with him on Facebook and then invited him to do a verse for The Box. We were really excited to have him on board.
Artist: Kalae All Day, Produced by Turnstylz Crew
Song: Bag of Keys
Album: “Audiowear” by Elasticbrand
Directed by: Arjen Noordeman, Elasticbrand
DP: Steve Dassas
Mastered by Eric Bassriel of Little Ax Media
Dancers: DaRebels, The Netherlands
Talking about the whole project, what aspect was the most:
Challenging
Without a doubt the most challenging was engineering the moulds from the 3D models.
Unexpected
Doing the concert at the Museum of Arts & Design, so much love in that room that night, it was really incredible. Also, the fact that MAD acquired the entire line for their permanent jewelry collection is something we will never forget.
Rewarding
The amazing collaborations with the European Ceramic Work Centre in Den Bosch, The 20+ musicians that created original songs for the record, and the fact that most of them performed their song at the concert at MAD.
And kind of in the middle of it all you moved from Brooklyn to the Netherlands! What do you love most about the Netherlands relative to NY?
I suppose the fact that there is a bit more breathing room, time to think instead of always running around to the next thing like in NYC. We also were able to rent a whole house with garden very nearby the center of Amsterdam, and that is great for our sanity.
What do you miss most about NY?
It is easier to do business in New York –people are all in the same boat in one way or another it seems and tend to help each other advance more. It feels like there is much more going on at all times, and therefore more to be inspired by, more business to do and so on. In summary, we relish being less of a workaholic in Holland while at the same time missing the enormous creative stimulation that NYC has to offer.
Why make an album in the era of digital music?
The main reason is that we wanted to create an artifact, and art piece to commemorate this amazingly special project. Something that you keep and think about once in a while. Digital music is so fleeting, most people including myself don’t even archive it anymore. It sits on your ipod for a while and then disappears. Initially we thought we would make a clay record, and we did tests cutting grooves into clay, it is possible in theory but the grain of the clay is too coarse and overwhelms the music by a lot, so we gave up on that experiment and pressed the vinyl records. In addition, vinyl is making a comeback in the clubs and many hip hop producers still swear by using vinyl for scratches and cuts on their records. A vinyl record is an ode to hip-hop culture itself.
What’s next for Elasticbrand?
Too soon to say at this point in time. We have just begun tossing some possible ideas around and making some sketches, but whatever we will do next will include the following components: Collaboration, Products, Graphics, and video.
