The advancement in 3D printing has produced everything from guns to unborn babies to selfies, now New York based artist and developer, Roopa Vasudevan is using the technology in a new and exciting way.

Synonymous with hip-hop culture, grills, worn by rappers and artists, show a sign of wealth and opulence. Roopa explores this by analysing famous lyrics from artists such as the Notorious B.I.G, Puff daddy, Jay Z, and uses an algorithm to pull out the main references in the lyrics to wealth and poverty, such as prostitution and drug dealing to expensive cars and jewelry. These algorithms have been recorded at a distance relevant to opposing words; the results were then used to create the 3D printed polished gold steel ‘grillz’. The lyrics are processed in a program called Pygenius, and the grills are modeled using Geomerative. The result, wearable pieces of gold, rock like jewellery.

At the exhibition itself you can listen to the related records while looking at the pieces themselves. This is a new and interesting way of visualising music; it also shows how you can communicate through design, by using the shapes created by the words to produce wearable pieces of jewellery.