Thinking Jewellery Two

The slogan "Thinking Jewellery" is, alongside the creative experimental aspects of the curriculum, a leitmotif of the Gemstones and Jewellery course at the Trier University of Applied Sciences/Campus Idar-Oberstein. The symposia – the highlights of this theoretical work on jewelry – are now accompanied by a recurrent publication series under the title Thinking Jewellery, which stimulates discussion on a contemporary theory of jewelry beyond ingrained classifications and the established boundaries that lie between the disciplines.

The interdisciplinary approach of the series makes it possible to locate jewelry within the context of art and design in today’s society. It aims to do this through academically oriented research and by promoting discourse within jewelry’s historical and social relationships. Whereas the first volume of the series, based on contributions from the first six symposia, focused on more general questions regarding the cultural praxis of adornment and jewelry design, Thinking Jewellery Two addresses more specific topics: Wilhelm Lindemann’s text examines the historical development of the crystalline, while Olaf Müller’s essay introduces Goethe’s works on physical phenomena linked to gemstones, and Regina Prange’s text analyses the sparkling world of Jeff Koons in its relationship to Andy Warhol.

All contributions in the publication Thinking Jewellery Two are based on lectures from the 2017 symposium of the same name at the Trier University of Applied Sciences/Campus Idar-Oberstein.

Contents:
Pg 5
Preface by Theo Smeets.

Pg 41
A Brief History of Polarity in Physics by Olaf Müller.

Pg 109
Gemstones - The Crystalline From Natural Sciences Paradigm to Art Symbol by Wilhelm Lindemann.

Pg 157
On the Authors.

About the author

Wilhelm Lindemann is a freelance curator and writer. He has worked as a curator and manager of festivals and cultural events for many years. Between 2001 and 2018 Lindemann headed the project of restoring and converting the Jakob Bengel Factory, a historic industrial building in Idar-Oberstein, to a cultural monument and museum. Since 2005 he has curated Thinking Jewellery, the academic colloquium at the Trier University of Applied Sciences, Campus Idar-Oberstein, and a wide range of jewelry exhibitions.

Olaf Müller studied mathematics and philosophy in Göttingen; since 2003 he is a Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin. In his writings, he deals with the epistemological question of whether we could always be connected to a deceptively real computer simulation (answer: no, see www.GehirnImTank.de), with moral problems of climate change and humanitarian war interventions, and with the puzzle of what bodiless survival after death might look like. In his 2015 book Mehr Licht he defended Goethe’s theory of colors.

Regine Prange studied art history, classical archaeology, modern history, and sociology in Munich and Berlin; 1991 doctorate at the FU Berlin; 1998 habilitation. Since 2001 Chair of Modern and Contemporary Art History, Art and Media Theory at the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main. Her main areas of research are: history of abstract painting; utopias and theories of modernity; history of art history and its methods; the aesthetic construction of space in painting and film.