This thesis was originated with an intention to demonstrate that the phenomenon of convergence, a notable flow in social and cultural fields in the 21st century, has caused formative and conceptual changes in the domain of contemporary jewelry and has...
This thesis was originated with an intention to demonstrate that the phenomenon of convergence, a notable flow in social and cultural fields in the 21st century, has caused formative and conceptual changes in the domain of contemporary jewelry and has expanded its scope at the same time.
The concept of convergence refers to combining or integrating the existing individual objects. The phenomenon of convergence is attributed to the breakdown of boundaries between different domains, including the breakdown of temporal boundaries among past, present and future and the breakdown of cultural and geographical boundaries between the East and the West, and between different regions all over the world. Charles Jenks mentioned that such a phenomenon is 'breaking down the boundary or the wall of genre between popular culture and high culture and thus achieving compromise and plurality of genres or forms'. In other words, he viewed this phenomenon of convergence in the same context where an integrated system of thinking was formed based on the open way of thinking as the previous western-centrism was dismantled due to postmodernism. Such a phenomenon occurs even in the domain of design. According to David Report, a worldwide design publication, in 2009, 'Breakdown of Boundaries' was mentioned as a new design trend to change the future, and was proposed as design methodology that can create something new by linking, beyond their boundaries, conflicting elements that are mutually separated in materials, technologies, functions and concepts in terms of the development of design. The phenomenon of convergence has also influenced the domain of jewelry, playing as a key driver that shifts the contemporary jewelry rapidly from narrowly-categorized decorative concept referring to personal ornaments in the past to a symbolic and conceptual existence reflecting societies and cultures.
Thus, the main purpose of this study is to verify such changes and characteristics of contemporary jewelry in the context of trans-boundary convergence by investigating cases and analyzing the contents and expand the 21st century's value of contemporary jewelry, while shedding a new light on the role of contemporary jewelry reflecting social and cultural changes. This study selected, as object of analysis, 58 pieces of contemporary jewelry created since 2000, samples of the convergence phenomenon of the 21st century's contemporary jewelry, and employed analysis tools based on the list of mode variables applied to the field of fashion by Roland Barthes, and TCISM Model applied to the field of product design by Adhi Nugraha.
As for the detailed research process, this study initially examined the background where the convergence phenomenon occurred with a focus on postmodernism and identified the characteristics of convergence by narrowing down actual cases of art and design among the phenomena of convergence throughout all the fields of art and culture in the contemporary society. In addition, by comprehending contemporary jewelry created under postmodernism since the 1960's with the concept of art jewelry, this study examined the style of expression, materials, changes and characteristics of techniques in the context of convergence and verified various types of trans-boundary convergence phenomena not only in the domain of contemporary jewelry but also in the domain of the formative art and design.
To verify the effect in of convergence phenomenon and convergence elements, resulted from the preceding research, on the 21st century's contemporary jewelry, this study analyzed convergence phenomena of contemporary jewelry by establishing the actual cases of contemporary jewelry categorized as 4 different types of A,B,C, and D by designers and output and examining the cases in terms of 6 different, formative and conceptual factors: type, form-structure, material, technique, function and concept. These initial results on the phenomena of convergence were applied to the analysis of contents, a qualitative analysis, whose results were incorporated into the quantitative analysis on the degree of convergence through the method of survey by experts of the field. All these steps of analysis finally demonstrated the convergence phenomenon of jewelry in the 21st century in the process of quantitative analysis and interpretation of the results screened by 4 types of contemporary jewelry and 6 factors for analysis. Furthermore, by identifying the convergence characteristics of contemporary jewelry as expansion of domain, technological evolution, combination of materials and functions and cultural convergence based on the findings above, this study verified its correlation with the domains of art and design. This study also proved possibility of the analysis model of jewelry for the future use.
As a result of examining the social and artistic implications of convergence phenomenon on the basis of trans-boundary openness, called 'Open', this study found out that since the convergence phenomenon is represented in the post-genre trends, ranging from epistemological and aesthetic aspects in the Baroque period to postmodernism, its role was clarified as a main driver of creating newness all over the culture and art in the modern society. The common features were discovered between the convergence phenomenon in art and design and the converging features in materials and techniques and the trans-boundary convergence phenomenon throughout the process of creation and development of contemporary jewelry aligned with the concept of art jewelry after the 1960s. Moreover, this study on the phenomenon and the degree of convergence in contemporary jewelry will contribute to the prediction of upcoming changes of jewelry design by systematically verifying the influence of convergence phenomenon that prevails today' human lives and even accelerates during the 21st century on the contemporary jewelry and it is expected that the results of this study can suggest a new direction for jewelry design through change in the concept of contemporary jewelry.