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Angela Becerra Vidergar

Whitechapel - Steampunk cultural ethic - 0 views

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steampunk whitechapel ethic ideology subculture

shared by Angela Becerra Vidergar on 12 Dec 08 - Cached
  • In a lot of ways I see steampunk and the aesthetic as part of a reaction to the current state of affairs. Not in terms of politics yadda yadda, but in the sense that it seems to come from a desire to regain some of the satisfaction and catharsis of dealing without something complex and real. In technology especially, with the advent of touch screen, "no tactility" apparatus, but I think it goes further into the overall lack of sensation that mainstream society offers. The lack of hardware creativity in the general population, and the lack of any real visceral experiences to be had in day to day life, I think is a huge part of Steampunk's attraction. Other types of creativity have their appeal, but nothing that can sit on your mantle, nothing that can clog up your living space and make your home dirty. Editing an anime music video can only sate your creativity so much, when compared to putting on some steel toe boots and soldering together a mad gyrocopter with a cannon strapped to the side.It's all part of the reaction to the simplicity and ease of living we, as a species, have been working towards for years. Fight Club for sci-fi geeks.I'd love to see a cultural movement defined by activity and the things it stands for rather than one defined by protesting the things it's against and demanding that others do something about them.
  • 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"
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • 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
  • 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
  • Personally, I'd love to see technology regress in visual style and it might well do if we move away from using plastics, and continue recycling retro fashions at such a massive rate... and real social changes only ever happen from the bottom up. Everyone's sitting on their arse waiting for some scientist or some government to fix their problems, when the only problem is how they spend their money
  • I'd love to see a cultural movement defined by activity and the things it stands for rather than one defined by protesting the things it's against and demanding that others do something about them
  • Currently Steampunk has quite an anti consumerist mentality but I wonder how much of that is simply due to a lack of availability of steam punk products
  • What stood out for me at this Convention was the manners of those in attendance. I have never been to a cleaner, better smelling, better behaved convention
  • Guests at this convention were given space, approached only after conversations with others were finished and respectfully addressed during panel discussions. No one was lewd, abusive, or rude to me during my attendance. In terms of the DIY ethic, most people I spoke to had made some element of their clothing or personally knew the person who did. I think there is a longing for a place where there can be a structured formality - a place where the cultural rules call for respect, manners and a sense of grace. Perhaps steampunk, in it's formal expressions, provides the space to have that formality
  • part of the reason for the loss of aesthetic in most of todays goods is that in the face of such astronomical R&D and Advertising costs workmanship is an expendable area. By contrast, in situations where the garage inventor is at work nicer materials are often a prerequisite. Firstly because they tend to require less expensive tools to work and secondly because when your small you have to be the best to compete. You can't sacrifice quality because it's what makes you stand out. To appreciate good design requires a higher standard of education and to makes sales requires that the person who cares most about the product (it's creator of someone close to) engage with their customers which in turn leads to a more civil society. After all, it's a lot harder to sell crap to someone when you have to do it in person
  • I think there is a longing for a place where there can be a structured formality - a place where the cultural rules call for respect, manners and a sense of grace. Perhaps steampunk, in it's formal expressions, provides the space to have that formality
  • I think there is a resistance to the idea of formality. Many people feel that, as in the past, a formal society would be restrictive and oppressive. However, Cultural Steampunk seems to be an idea that balences freedom and a sense of formality. The people who think that it's crazy might not realize that there is a sense of freedom in formality. It is the freedom to move about as a respected individual in a community. Obviously, in the past, this freedom was not applied to all people, but since Steampunk is a mixture of the Old and the New, it now can be applied in a more equal way. In many ways, Steampunk is an ideal, rather than a reality. In a place such as SalonCon, it can exist for a weekend - but could it exist for longer periods of time? Could such formality make it's way into the mainstream?
  • steampunk at its best suggests the perfect (or maybe unique/interesting) combination of art and science - and being able to appreciate the ingenuity as well as the aesthetics and beauty of a 'thing', I think...with that appreciation comes the respect
  • The formality I can see in the aesthetic of Steampunk, because of the constraints in the design, and that would probably feed into all aspects of the culture, beware the Steampunk xenophobe. Though this would be at odds with the DIY and experimental nature of the culture, with a multitude of people all creating their own Steampunk, it could be an interesting tension.I do see the ethic or culture being a lot more anarchic, punk, than prudish, Victorian. again an interesting tension. Finding the middle ground may be something that Steampunk can make moves on, because it does seem to explicitly merge these two quite contrary ideas.
  • Small groups of people dedicated to steampunk ethics, codes of honor and general societal tendencies should work, to a point. Trying to make it happen on a larger scale, probably not so good. However, applying a somewhat watered down version of steampunk culture (hitting the big points, such as creative thinking, DIY mindsets, an emphasis on politeness and proper manners) to modern society as a whole might just work
Angela Becerra Vidergar

"Difference engines and other infernal devices: history according to steampunk" - 0 views

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criticism literature steampunk academic

shared by Angela Becerra Vidergar on 11 Dec 08 - No Cached
  • In the introduction to The Other Victorians, Steven Marcus states that ''as we try to understand the past we try to understand ourselves in relation to the past'' (xix). Marcus's words, as much as they provide a rationale for historiography in general, are particularly pertinent to the fascination that the Victorian period has for contemporary audiences. We recognize ourselves in a play of similarity and difference, or, as Marcus puts it, the Victorians' ''otherness connects them to us,'' though, he cautions, ''connection is nevertheless not identity.'' While Marcus allows for historical breakthroughs, that is, for moments of radical change, he still considers Victorianism the first half of the paradigmatic bracket within which we still operate at the present time
  • he insists that the transfer of culturally marginal materials into the mainstream takes place the same way today as it did a hundred years ago--''split off from what might have been expected to accompany [them]--impulses of a social revolutionary kind'' (154). In other words, what we share with the Victorians are essentially the same social, economic, and political structures, as well as a sense that cultural transformation can or will take place without affecting them in any direct or immediate way
  • what makes the Victorian past so fascinating is its unique historical ability to reflect the present moment
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Depending on how exactly the present re-/constructs the Victorian past, it will lend itself to a variety of ideological purposes. Early forms of the feminist movement, the glory days of British imperialism and colonialism, industrialization, urbanization, and proletarization--they all can be construed as variants of contemporary issues as long as the paradigm of historical continuity is upheld by cultural critics like Marcus
  • examine respectively the scientific and the supernatural discourses whose intertwining makes the Victorian p.245 period so fascinating to contemporary readers
  • Steampunk constitutes a special case among alternative histories, a science fiction subgenre that postulates a fictional event of vast consequences in the past and extrapolates from this event a fictional though historically contingent present or future.
  • A steampunk novel, such as Gibson's and Sterling's The Difference Engine , follows the formula in positing, among other things, that Victorianism takes a turn for the exotic when Charles Babbage introduces the computer more than a hundred years before its historical adven
  • Considering how quickly steampunk has fragmented into a bewildering variety of styles, critics would be best off considering their own definitions as working hypotheses, tentative, evolving fictions in themselves.
  • postmodern fantastic historiography
  • In one, fabulation or mythomania (369) conjures up a world of mixed ontologies, which conveys ''the feel of the real past better than any of the ''facts'' themselves'' (368)
  • In the other, ''the purely fictional intent is underscored and reaffirmed in the production of imaginary people and events among whom from time to time real-life ones unexpectedly appear and disappear''
  • means of specific historical detail, by a pastiche of the rhetoric of Victorian literature, and by the introduction of fantastic technologies that might not have existed a hundred years ago but have the right ''feel.'
  • placing imaginary and real-life people side by side
  • steampunk focuses on technology as the crucial factor in its understanding and portrayal of Victorianism. In adopting the name ''steampunk'' that is to say, in chosing the steam engine as the most appropriate icon of the past to describe itself, it makes technology its main focus. Since the contemporary world is highly technological, any past in which it would see itself reflected must share, or rather, must be made to share, its cultural agenda
  • What Rosenheim suggests here is that a specifically technological history is discontinuous and erratic enough to defy extrapolative prediction. To the degree that the historical changes produced by technological breakthroughs are ''literally unimaginable,'' they demand metaphorical strategies to be represented properly, strategies the fantastic can provide in great range and variety
  • More like Jameson's ''postmodern fantastic historiography'' and less like science fiction's more conventional alternative histories, steampunk is primarily concerned with foregrounding the fictionality of its narrative universe.
  • Instead, these authors employ a pseudo-scientific rhetoric that, in keeping with science fiction's fictive technologies, reminds us that all disciplines claiming unproblematic access to the truth operate within the framework of the same narrative conventions and are subject to historical and cultural change
  • To be sure, steampunk takes the textuality of history for granted. It does so when it mixes historical figures and fictional characters or when it fictionalizes historical characters. Figures like Lady Ada Byron in The Difference Engine, Whitman and Dickinson in Walt and Emily, or Queen Victoria in Victoria appear to contemporary readers primarily as textually mediated. Our knowledge of them depends on texts written by or about them
  • Angela Becerra Vidergar on 11 Dec 08
     
    Article in Extrapolation by Steffen Hantke.
Angela Becerra Vidergar

The California Steampunk Convention - Keynote | The Steampunk Workshop - 0 views

steampunkworkshop.com/a-steampunk-convention-keynote

steampunk

shared by Angela Becerra Vidergar on 08 Dec 08 - Cached
  • What do you do when you are promised no future beyond the next Steve Jobs keynote address or summer blockbuster movie? What do you do when your present consists of going to work, paying the bills, and trying to make ends meet? Our society would have you put your head down, work a little longer, try a little harder, and maybe order that 50-inch wide screen TV from Amazon.com.
  • The EULA rebellion. The fact that you're forbidden from opening a box, that some software companies insist that you're just renting their products, and that hardware makers intentionally cripple their devices, is a challenge to hackers and tinkerers. Tinkering is defined in part in terms of a resistance to consumer culture and the restrictive policies of corporations.  
  • The advent of cheap personal computers spawned a society of programmers and hackers who write computer programs for their own use and distribute the source code, the program's core instructions, for free to anyone that's interested. Over time, these hackers have coalesced into groups and organizations that are capable of rivaling the skill and ability of huge corporations when it comes to the production of computer programs and particularly computer operating systems.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • I have a bit of a confession to make; I don't really know what Steampunk is. Genre, aesthetic, movement, sub-culture, style, all of these terms have been used to describe it but none quite capture the richness and variety I see in this community.
Josh Kidd

"From the Wilds of America" - Analyzing the Idea of "British Colonial America" in Steam... - 0 views

www.racialicious.com/...ca%e2%80%9d-in-steampunk-essay

sff steampunk

shared by Josh Kidd on 07 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Josh Kidd on 07 Jul 09
     
    Another article looking at issues of race in Steampunk literature. This one specifically explores the idea of "British Colonial America."
Josh Kidd

The Intersection of Race and Steampunk: Colonialism's After-Effects & Other Stories, fr... - 0 views

www.racialicious.com/...k-of-colours-perspective-essay

sff spirituality

shared by Josh Kidd on 07 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Josh Kidd on 07 Jul 09
     
    This article looks at race in Steampunk literature and the Steampunk subculture.
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