Boucheron’s Quatre 5D Memory Ring is encoded with the sound of water that will endure for billions of years

Throughout history, jewels have always possessed deep sentimental value — whether as a family heirloom or a symbolic token of an important milestone. Lockets were once popular as vessels to store cherished photographs, while mourning jewellery was even made with a dearly departed’s hair.

But what if ephemeral memories can be digitally encoded for posterity? Digital jewels are already touted as the next wave of mobile computing devices. Still, the first to realise this in a high-end jewellery creation — not for practical tasks but for preserving a personal memory — is the avant-garde Parisian maison of Boucheron.

Launched as part of its 2024 Innovation Capsule, the Quatre 5D Memory Ring essentially encapsulates the memory of water through the engraving of a binary code. 

This incredible innovation serves the artistic dream of the house’s lauded creative director, Claire Choisne, who says that if she had to choose only one memory of water to give to future generations, it would be the endless sound of waves. 

“I wanted to encapsulate, for billions of years, a memory of my childhood spent by the Atlantic Ocean. This piece proves that we have still not reached the boundaries of jewellery, and we will continue to push them to express the strength of our creative vision fully,” adds Choisne, who chose the house icon Quatre ring, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, as a vessel for her precious recollections.

Rewriting the future

To develop the score, Boucheron collaborated with IRCAM — Centre Pompidou, the French Institute for Acoustic/Music Research and Coordination and one of the world’s largest public research centres dedicated to musical creation and scientific research. 

For sound encoding, an ultra-fast nanostructuring technique known as 5D Memory, invented by Peter Kazansky, a professor at the University of Southampton and the chief science officer of SPhotonix, is adopted. 

Immense quantities of information in nanostructured glass, which is composed of microscopic structures measuring just a few nanometers, can be stored for perpetuity through it.

Text, images, videos, and sound can be engraved in the form of a binary code using a femtosecond laser, which emits optical pulses with a duration of just a few femtoseconds (one femtosecond equals 10 to 15 seconds). 

The key to reading the data also involves light. By varying the dimensions of the engraving and the laser signal’s wavelength and intensity, the data points will change the polarisation of the light passing through them. The data can be read and translated into their original format by viewing these changes using a polarised light microscope.

Singular sensation

Due in part to the size of the Quatre ring design, 5D engraving made it possible to record up to 100 megabytes of data in the material, which will last for billions of years. The result: The Quatre 5D Memory ring becomes a veritable time(less) capsule. 

And one needn’t worry that the engraving might be compromised, as the data is written on an equally innovative nanocomposite, Glassomer, that boasts extreme sturdiness and transparency. The code is placed in the centre of one of the Clou de Paris motifs, which form part of the ring’s patterns sculpted into the Glassomer.

Of course, being a piece of high jewellery, the ring shank also flaunts a row of eternity diamonds set in white gold.

To Boucheron CEO Helene Poulit-Duquesne, this creation holds immeasurable potential in not just technology and artistry but also humanity: “By succeeding in encapsulating an audio work within a jewellery design, we are exploring new territories of expression and opening up limitless realms of possibility. The Quatre 5D Memory ring becomes the vessel that holds a memory, an emotion, given to future generations.”