Stolen Jewels is a project that explores "tangible vs. virtual in relation to real and perceived value." Designed by the duo Mike & Maaike, who also create products and concepts for high tech companies such as Google, this collection rips images of expensive jewels from image searches and scales them up to lifesize. The pixelated result is rendered in colored squares on leather, making for a very flattened form with jagged edges.
This quirky collection no-doubt has its appeal to the clever geeky shoppers in San Francisco, where the studio is based and sells. The pieces are certainly for those who shop with their mind rather than their eyes. Conceptually, they have much to intrigue. They make reference to our digital world, which is bold, but where is the style? To me, the style got lost somewhere between Super Mario Brothers and Microsoft Paint. I know it's not about aesthetic, but...
The aesthetic really does seem out of date. Why? It's not as if this has ever been done before. Still, it feels old. It feels kind of '90s. Probably, the sight of a pixelated image is in itself becoming outdated. In this time of ultra high-res images on computer screens and cameras, the pixelated image is dying out. When is the last time you zoomed into something so far that you got to see the pixels? It's been awhile, and my guess is that as time goes on, pixelation will start to be an artifact.
http://www.mikeandmaaike.com/#p_stolen-jewels
