Dezeen School Shows: a jewellery collection made from packaging foam is included in Dezeen's latest school show by students at Lucerne School of Art and Design.

Also featured is a helium-filled object designed to float alongside the wearer and a project exploring how AI can generate jewellery designs.

Lucerne School of Art and Design

Institution: Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
School: Lucerne School of Art and Design
Course: Bachelor XS Jewellery
Tutors: Christoph Zellweger, Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Monica Gaspar, Peter Bauhuis, Gabi Veit, Kiko Gianocca, Suzan Curtis and Salome Bruggisser

School statement:

"XS stands for everything special, the X-tra and the X-tended. In other words, an enhanced, forward-looking definition of jewellery.

"Students' individual art-design stance is explored via interdisciplinary crossovers in jewellery design, performative object, wearable design, medical prostheses, digital materiality, conceptual craft and art.

"What emerges at the end of each entirely individual learning process is the authentic – wearable statements and emotionally evocative products that convey meaning regarding the crucial questions of desirability, viability, sustainability and social relevance.

"What is too much, what is X-cess, what is e-S-sential? Which items are important, what do we carry around with us, and why?"

Airborne Companion: Making Dreams Take Off by Tobias Bieri

"Airborne Companion is based on the idea that jewellery should accompany a person and symbiotically match people's lives.

"The object developed by Tobias Bieri is intended to be light and animating. The result is a helium-filled companion that joins the user side-by-side and can be steered by gestures.

"A vivacity is conjured up in the fantasy of the user before their own eyes. The rest is handwork, technology and the struggle to find the right material, preventing thoughts from floating completely away."

Student: Tobias Bieri
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: zamary.bieri[at]gmail.com

Spinning Mini-Me: The Collection by Jenny Christen

"Like gyroscopes, we revolve around ourselves – around our ideal image of ourselves.

"Spinning Mini-Me collection is derived from photos of the designer's own self-spinning body, with Christen creatively exploiting the dance imbued with stigma and associations as a metaphor.

"She scales silhouettes and the turns generate abstract volumes. Spinning tops are like pole dancers or performers – they dance on tables, on mirrored surfaces, and like us seek a stage."

Student: Jenny Christen
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Thai Hua, Anina Schenker, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: jenny.christen[at]hotmail.com

Embodiments: A Collection of Uncanny Body Extensions by Nicole Eugster

"The Embodiments by Nicole Eugster are objects for special use.

"Placed on the body, they oblige the wearer to undertake new patterns of movement, shift the perception of distance and closeness, create an awareness of one's own gestures and influence others.

"Embodiments are objects that lend power to those who surrender to them. Ambiguous in appearance – between the magical and the morbid – they invite the wearer to a self-empowering role play and to dance in twilight in-between worlds."

Student: Nicole Eugster
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: eugster.ni[at]gmail.com

Kill Your Darling: Confessions of a Goldsmith by Benedict Haener

"Diamonds, gold, sapphires, pearls – the world of the trained goldsmith Benedict Haener revolves around precious materials, inherent beauty, and felt and real (monetary) value.

"In Kill Your Darling, Haener rethinks these acquired traditions. With manual finesse, he pursues new design strategies and combines them into a collection.

"Innovations are impossible without abandoning what is dear to one."

Student: Benedict Haener
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: benedict.haener[at]bluewin.ch

Searching for the Soul: Potential for Generating Jewellery in AI by Fabian Laffitte

"'Fabian Laffitte says that 'jewellery needs soul' but how can one search for the quality of being enlivened by soulfulness in images generated using artificial intelligence?

"Laffitte has attempted to do so, revealing his processes and showing his findings as a curated staging of 2.5-dimensional reliefs. He says it is not jewellery, but he sees potential in it.

"However, his mistrust vis-à-vis the randomness – the banality and emptiness of the tool predominates.

"Minus artistic intention, AI simply offers an infinite number of surfaces, which tend more to distract than help in the search for a soul and essence."

Student: Fabian Laffitte
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: fabianlaffitte[at]hotmail.com

To Be Continued: Fragments of My Diary by Josephine Meylan

"As an obsessive collector of mementoes, Josephine Meylan records the traces of her life in jewellery.

"Fleeting moments of the day, reflections or things already experienced are given form with materials that are meaningful to her, sometimes with existing objects.

"Memories are made visible and physically tangible to be worn as jewellery and companions. Each piece tells a personal story.

"Meylan allows us a glimpse into her everyday life and reveals fragments of intensely lived time."

Student: Josephine Meylan
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: josephine.meylan[at]googlemail.com

Wobbly Angel Struggling: Or How to Not Grow Up by Kaja Saxer

"Zialo draws. Zialo is three years old, has a vivid fantasy and is bubbling with ideas.

"Zialo always finds daringly ingenious solutions for everything. Zialo is Saxer's childlike alter ego.

"In Wobbly Angel Struggling, Saxer absorbs Zialo's unframed approach to art. Inspired by children's drawings, she creates a collection of airy, wobbly objects.

"What do we lose when we grow up? How can we preserve a certain carefreeness while learning professionalism?"

Student: Kaja Saxer
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: kaja.saxer[at]gmail.com

Surprise Me Once Again: A Collection of Foamy Memories by Christiane Stock

"Who doesn't know that momentary feeling of happiness when a surprise succeeds?

"Christiane Stock's work involves condensing, both in terms of content and physically.

"Stocks works with foam. It is an omnipresent packaging material whose characteristics she has researched in order to conjure up wonders – both small and large – and all manually highly accomplished.

"The Surprise Me Once Again collection is a call to playful interaction. When is packaging packaging and when does the content become wearable jewellery?"

Student: Christiane Stock
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: stock.christiane[at]gmx.de

Living Traces: Pigments on the Skin by Lea Tschanz

"People are always moving, each body in its unique way, to their own tact. Lea Tschanz places small objects, utensils and tools soaked in pigments onto the bodies of her family and on herself.

"These items respond to their movements like seismometers. The results are unique traces and unexpected patterns on the skin.

"Tschanz then photographed them in order to recall them. Colour on skin is jewellery to her – completely archaic, completely primal, and completely in the here and now."

Student: Lea Tschanz
Tutors: Ilona Schwippel, Anina Schenker, Thai Hua, Christoph Zellweger and Monica Gaspar
Email: leatschanz[at]hotmail.ch

Partnership content

This school show is a partnership between Dezeen and Lucerne School of Art and Design. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.