About twenty feet below the pavement the group emerged into an eight-foot-wide brickwork tube, the end of which was beyond the immediate reach of the lights. The sturdily-constructed tunnel was a relic from the years following the American Civil War, and it had remained virtually forgotten beneath the streets of New York since its main entrance was sealed sometime around 1880. As the men explored, they found the tunnel in remarkably good condition in spite of its age. When they reached the end of the tube, the men happened upon the wrecked remains of a unique mechanism for transport: a pair of carriages from America’s first subway, the experimental and ill-fated Pneumatic Transit System.
Yes, 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. Even his clothing — an unlikely fusion of current and neo-Edwardian pieces (polo shirt, gentleman’s waistcoat, paisley bow tie), not unlike those he plans to sell this summer at his own Manhattan haberdashery — is an expression of his keenly romantic worldview.
It is also the vision of steampunk, 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, brass diving bells and jar-shaped protosubmarines. First appearing in the late 1980s and early ’90s, steampunk has picked up momentum in recent months, making a transition from what used to be mainly a literary taste to a Web-propagated way of life.
I’ve been thinking about what Steampunk has to offer the world besides being another quaint subculture, particularly in light of the fact that it’s about to step over the line of subculture and into trendy nonsense that will inevitably bring with it hoards of pipe clogging band waggoneers.
What I’m really interested in is the Victorian enthusiastic amateur inventor/scientist part. The way I see it, most of the worlds problems - poverty, hunger climate change etc.- will never be effectively addressed by a top down, high tech research and loads of investment capital approach. Rather, I imagine that any progress that will have any real effect will have to be of the sort that a self educated person can make in their garage.
There’s been a lot of debate about weather or not all the Steampunk case mods etc. are legitimate as they don’t actually use steam, aren’t real Babbage engines or whatever and I think that’s pretty legitimate although it also misses the point.
Which is that steampunk is really an art movement. It doesn’t really have any cultural agenda such as the original punk movement did and it’s certainly not interested with making steam age technology “useful”.
I would like to propose that were there to be some sort of a Steampunk cultural ethic it should be in taking that amateur inventor approach to modern technology with an eye to addressing the issues that humanity faces today.
Oh, and it should of course be done in such a way as to exemplify quality workmanship and ostentatious ornamentation.
