Gawker: Steampunk

Steampunk Goes to the Hamptons

Sheila — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:54:05 EDT

The Hamptons has discovered steampunk! Hamptons.com has an article about a gallery show in Southampton featuring steampunk artists. [Hamptons via Boing Boing]

More Office Nostalgia

Sheila — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:23:03 EDT

It's a steampunk mouse. Duh! [Boing Boing]

Office Nostalgia

Nick Denton — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:12:59 EDT

It's a measure of the fluorescent-lit hellishness of the modern cubicle maze that we're consumed by nostalgia for office cultures that none of us remember. Part of the attraction of AMC's Mad Men is the show's depiction of Madison Avenue at the start of the 1960s, populated by hard-drinking chain-smoking womanizing ad executives and their large-breasted secretaries: in equal measure politically incorrect and glamorous. Or one can go further back to a Victorian era of flattering lighting, mad inventors' laboratories and a belief in technological progress which is only now coming back into fashion. In these period office environments, computers look out of place; but some customizers have solved that problem.

(Photos via Web Urbanist, click to enlarge.)

Telectroscope

Nick Douglas — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:18:51 EDT

"The Telectroscope is a 21st Century realisation of a 19th Century design. A tunnel bored beneath the Atlantic connects London with New York and by the aid of a complex series of lenses and mirrors allows people at one end to see and be seen by those at the other." Of course this steampunk art installation is really two video screens at either end. The New York end is at Fulton Ferry Landing. [Telectroscope; photo by Charlotte Gilhooly]

Video Of The Steampunk Computer Guy

Nick Douglas — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:03:37 EDT

Now that steampunk is dead, the media is sending people out to videotape people who like to dress old-timey and make their computers look like steam engines. For example, Jake Von Slatt here shows the Boston Phoenix his custom keyboard and RSS telegraph machine.

While I love the dedication, planning and physical labor that went into these projects, every time I see a really good one my first question is "How much to buy it?"

Steampunk

Sheila — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:48:37 EDT

Steampunk! According to the NYT's Thursgay Styles, it's a "subculture that is the aesthetic expression of a time-traveling fantasy world, one that embraces music, film, design and now fashion, all inspired by the extravagantly inventive age of dirigibles and steam locomotives." They describe steampunkers as fusspots with a taste for gaslight-era style: "he owns a flat-screen television, but he has modified it with a burlap frame. He uses an iPhone, but it is encased in burnished brass." But steampunk's been around for a while, of course. Despite the length of the piece, glossed over is the fact that this hot new movement started with a book called the Difference Engine—in 1990!

Steampunk isn't completely about clothes and accessories; it's an offshoot of the science fiction genre cyberpunk. Author of cyberpunk novel Neuromancer William Gibson (coiner of the word "cyberspace") collaborated with Bruce Sterling for the classic steampunk alternate history novel The Difference Engine, set in Victorian Britain. Just saying!

Anyway, it must be reaching a critical mass: the recent 24th Chaos Communications Congress, a hacker event, had steampunk as the theme for their ball. And a steampunk store? Open soon in Manhattan. You'll be able to finally buy a brass case for your iPhone.

I just realized: our new offices are totally steampunk—check out the vintage reception desk!

Steampunk Moves Between Two Worlds [NYT]

[Photo: Kit by Nadya Lev Photo]