The Sublimation Of Recycling And Sound

Repechage and Quietude: two Made in Italy projects to help people to express themselves and enjoy new experiences by creating interactive jewelry


  • a repechage ring

    a repechage ring

According to its dictionary definition, jewelry is an item of precious metal, often adorned with precious stones, to be worn as an ornament' but it could also be interpreted as a  ‘person or thing whose talents and qualities make them precious’. This latter explanation offers a connection to two interesting projects that focus on the person generating new and original precious items.

Repechage
is a project started in 2008 which binds jewelry to memory, as the creator, Francesca Caltabiano, explains. «You begin by digging out old jewelry from drawers or jewelry boxes and then, through recycling and integration, end up creating something new. A unique item of jewelry that encases not only memories but also the emotions linked to them.» A kind of puzzle made up of unforgettable moments which, thanks to a precise and shared work, are transformed into something tangible, visible and wearable. Francesca explains that Repechage is the result of a playful and joyful yet rather delicate project since, in order for the jewelry to take shape, one has to delve into a person's intimacy, understand one another without being afraid to share stories. A sort of ‘narrative psychology’ that has attracted the attention of those who work with people suffering from particularly intense emotional traumas. In fact, in 2017, a meeting with Dr. Elisabetta Surrenti, a phychotherapist at the OSMA Usl Psycho-oncology SOS Centre, led to the creation of a second project: Repechage – Il gioiello racconta (Jewelry tells a story). A shared, creative path with psychotherapeutic value for oncology patients to help them elaborate a painful past and period of illness. «I never imagined that I could, through my work, help people in difficulty with such a totally different context to the one I'm used to. Donating a smile to someone who is experiencing or has gone through a delicate and complicated moment of his or her life, is extremely emotional and touching.»

  • francesca caltabiano working on a repechage jewel

    francesca caltabiano working on a repechage jewel

  • a repechage necklace

    a repechage necklace

  • a repechage work

    a repechage work

  • a funny man made of repechage

    a funny man made of repechage

Quietude is the name of a project created in September 2017 by Siena University's Fab Lab Santa Chiara, under the management of professor Patrizia Marti and with the collaboration of Glitch Factory s.r.l., T4All s.r.l., Siena Art Institute and the University of Southern Denmark. It is a collection of jewelry designed and created for and with hearing-impaired people of almost all ages as part of the European Wear Sustain 2017 research and innovation program. These interactive accessories provides those wearing them with a sound experience through the body thanks to detecting and consequently transforming environmental sounds into vibrations, lights or changes in the shape of their components. In this way, everything that happens in the surrounding area is transmitted and perceived by the person through his/her other senses. The jewelry, thanks to their interactive properties, are connected to a smartphone application that is able to detect, decipher and notify the sound. As Professor Marti says, «We are doing a series of experiments to further enrich the expressiveness of these jewelry items so that the wearers can at least understand the type of sound merely through body stimulation and without looking at the app». The focus of this project is essentially  mankind. In fact, it was devised to bring people as close together as possible and help their lives easier by using tools that are not strictly connected to the medical world and that can give a new form of expression to disability. All through the use of recycled and eco-sustainable materials such as regenerated leathers or eco-textiles, combined with technology miniaturization,  crucially important for being able to best express the aesthetic appearance of the jewelry. A second collection is currently being produced and while awaiting for sponsor funding in order to be able to distribute it, the project continues to arouse interest, so much so that it is taking part at leading events, such as Future Fest in London and Ars Elettronica in Linz.

  • professor patrizia marti during the presentation of the project

    professor patrizia marti during the presentation of the project

  • how is made a quietude jewel

    how is made a quietude jewel

  • quietude flower

    quietude flower

  • quietude necklaces

    quietude necklaces

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