Digital Baroque

Global – Artist Ada Sokół and jewellery designer Étienne Garachon have created a fictional brand campaign that comments on the contemporary aesthetic of luxury.

• The AMA concept draws on the branding and advertising of luxury goods
• It uses visual marketing techniques from the luxury jewellery sector – which aim to stimulate desire – in order to comment on those techniques

Rendered in a highly stylised CGI aesthetic, the AMA imagery draws inspiration from the decorative forms of precious corals and mother of pearl finishes traditionally used in ornamentation. ‘Jewellery is the quintessential object of desire,’ Sokol tells LS:N Global. ‘It is the perfect lens through which to view contemporary approaches to beauty.’ The campaign features still and moving images portraying the objects against a fantastical backdrop of dusk-lit, reflective surfaces and perfectly formed starfish and shells, amplifying the highly romanticised and unrealistic imagery popular in luxury advertising.

On a conceptual level, the campaign aims to examine how marketing mechanisms are used to subconsciously stimulate desire. ‘AMA is a commentary on contemporary branding, but rather than just criticising it we are employing and exposing the tools used in marketing, especially neuromarketing,’ explains Sokol.

Artists have often used fictional brands and products to examine the established notions of luxury value, as LS:N Global explored in our Aspirational Fakes microtrend.