If you find yourself in downtown Toronto, be sure to stop by Malabar Costumes at 14 McCaul Street, they currently have the most fabulous Steampunk window displays. Delightfully inspiring!

We all know Steampunkers party like it’s 1899.  That it’s a steam-powered world of airships, cogs, clockwork, crazy inventions, and brass goggles with plenty of room for air pirates, brass robots, and corset-and-bustle-wearing vampire hunters. 

But what’s beyond Steampunk?

Here are a few things I’ve found, though many seem to overlap.  This is by no means a definitive or exhaustive list:

Biopunk— Features those who are a product of biological experimentation, usually against the backdrop of a totalitarian government or megacorproations who are abusing science for personal gain or social control.

Clockpunk—A world where steam technology has been replaced by intricate clockwork designs. 

Cyberpunk—Near-future earth with super-high technology and the breakdown of social order, usually with dystopian/anarchist /rebellion themes featuring conflict between humans and robots/cyborgs/megacorporations. 

Cyberprep-Cyberpunk featuring a leisure-driven, happy society instead of a gritty one where technology and body modifications are used for recreation and pleasure.

Dieselpunk—The world just beyond steampunk where gas has replaced steam, steal replaced brass, it’s a world of flappers, gangsters—the roaring twenties though noir/dystopian goggles (I’ve also seen it called Oilpunk).

Gasolinepunk—The 1960’s hotrod era taken to the max.

Monsterpunk—Mechanical and steampunk elements mixed together in a monster world (or one powered by monsters).    Monster Commute is a good example: http://www.monstercommute.com

Oilpunk/Petrolpunk/Petropunk—An idealized version of an oil-based society.  Think floating cities with giant rocket engines.

Sailpunk—Where new technologies take on a nautical aesthetic, such as in the movie Treasure Planet.

 Do you have anything to add?  Elfpunk (those great rock & roll and car-racing Elf stories that take place in our world.)  Post-Cyberpunk(Cyberpunk minus the dystopia)…

Any of these genres spark any ideas (or new genres to explore)?

 I’d love to hear your ideas.   Unfortunately, I can’t find any more art deco tiaras, but I have found some cute tiny ones.  So one lucky poster will win a baby tiara and a bag of productivity pixy dust. 

 Have a great week everyone.  Check back on Friday for the winner!

Att jag plockade med mig den här boken från biblioteket berodde på att den vanligtvis så pålitliga källan Någon På Internet hade rekommenderat den som ett exempel på clockpunk, vilket alltså skulle vara detsamma som steampunk, men utspela sig under den industriella revolutionen snarare än under den viktorianska eran och ha urverk snarare än ångmaskiner som teknisk grund. Originalets titel är också Clockwork, så här har vi alltså ännu ett exempel på den lika obegripliga som genuint svenska vanan att ta suggestiva och/eller hårda titlar och översätta dem med ännu en fånig ramsa i sagan om-stilen. I det här fallet visade det sig vara åtminstone delvis befogat, för en saga är just vad det är. Tyvärr, för även ungar kan behöva lite fantastik, dvs berättelser där de fantastiska inslagen är mer systematiserade än här. Ja, just det, detta är alltså en bok för barn som är yngre än tonåringar (klassad som Hcg enligt SAB-systemet) och kan alltså inte ens sägas vara en ungdomsbok. Därför skulle jag kanske, för att vara rättvis, ta tidsmaskinen och åka och fråga mig själv som nioåring om detta är något att ha eller inte, men jag anar att det lilla puckot inte heller skulle vara särskilt imponerad. Detta är en saga, varken mer eller mindre; ett stämningsfull liten historia med en påklistrad (nästan bokstavligt talat påklistrad då Pullman (originellt nog, ska medges) lagt in små “faktarutor” där han kommenterar sin egen berättelse) moral. Men jag vill inte ha sagor, jag vill ha fantasy. Bättre än såhär kan han, Pullman.

Betyg: 2/5 – knappt godkänd

/Olov L

I love making these tiny boxes, this one is about two centimeters across.  As usual, the tiny jewel rotates out to catch the light.

Hello all, and how I’ve missed you!

For those who haven’t seen them yet, the immensely talented clock builder Eric Freitas has posted pictures of his newest mechanical marvel. Visit his blog for an incredibly detailed documentation of the creation process, including lots of delicious photos.

Unfortunately this piece isn’t for sale.

I interviewed Eric Freitas back in July, if you missed it, here is the link.

Eric, thanks again for sharing your beautiful work with us!

After much contemplation over these past long Winter months, I have decided to focus on the Curious Oddities shop and Blog.

I am applying to some craft shows here in Toronto, and there is a fabulous Circusy, vaudevillian event in the works for late Summer. Look forward to a new website, delightful new items, news, interviews and adventure.  I’ll keep you posted.

Psst. Need a good web designer? How about some incredible photography work or maybe some copy written?

Yes, you do.

And I know where to get it: www.jeremiahtolbert.com.

Jeremy is going through a bit of a rough patch due to the economy and he’s available for work – part time, full time, freelance, send it his way. I can personally attest to his skills. He’s super dependable and extremely fast.

Check out one of his most recent projects at http://www.clockpunk.com.

While not the coolest thing I say today/yesterday, these were definitely awesomtastic none-the-less.  I helped a friend pick out a new skin for her blackberry.  She was looking at a few steampunk themes, and we both fell in love with the iPod versions.  

Take a gander at these:

Option 1

Option 2

Option 2 is probably my favorite I think.  They have laptop skins as well, fyi.

/End of Line

~ Darcy

I’m letting this piece sit for a while until I figure out where to go with it.  I spent much of today drilling tiny, tiny holes in wire which I will rivet tomorrow, also experimenting with odd-shaped rivets of various materials.

Last Saturday was a day of coincidental meetings.  At the show (which was in another city) I ran into the lovely woman who was my neighbour for the last seven years until she bought a house this summer.  Later, at dinner in a Peruvian restaurant, it turned out that the woman sitting next to me had been in the same Chinese (language) school that I was in, for the same three years, but we had never met before this.  Two friends on my left told us they ran into each other on a sidewalk in New York last month, neither knew the other was planning to be there.

On request, here is a picture of one of the legs next to two acorns so that the size is clear.

These are some of the bits that consumed my day.

This is the beginning of a little shrine I started this evening after I got tired of making bug legs (below).  The figure was a gift  from the always generous kats in the belfry, who just opened her etsy shop.

Last week, I finished reading Mainspring, a clockpunk novel by Jay Lake.  It is a quest/coming of age story, and while the introduction to the quest seemed a little abrupt and cliched, this didn’t detract from the story. Awkward mechanics in the opening hook can be dangerous, but it was over quickly enough to focus on the story at hand.

The quest is rather simple. Hethor must rewind the clockwork that keeps the Earth rotating around the sun. The consequences of failure are absolute.

The story includes several steampunk elements. Victoria reigns over the British Empire. Airships fly over the land. The main character is not quite a scientist, but as a clockmaker’s apprentice, he carries many of the same traits.

Like many steampunk stories, Mainspring provides a platform for social criticism. The most obvious case in Mainspring is the place of religion and faith. Mainspring takes place in a world created by a higher being, in which the artificial construction of the world is obvious for all to see. In the world which Lake has created, formalized religion has a more prominent place than in today’s society. As evidence of a higher power is clear for all to see, it is much more difficult to deny. Mainspring is critical of some aspects of formalized religion. As it becomes more organized, the basic tenents of the faith have become obscured. Thrust out of society, Hethor must come to terms with his faith.

Mainspring also provides a criticism on gender inequality, as Hethor encounters several independent women on his journey who surpass his expectations. The expected roles are defined by the dominant religious views in the world.

A final theme explored in the book is that of British colonialism. Hethor is press-ganged into the Royal Navy, and joins a colonial expedition to the south. The projection of Britain’s power into new areas is one that clearly mirrors our own history.

Mainspring is a very enjoyable read. I look forward to seeing what Lake has been up to in Escapement, the sequel to Mainspring.

Be sure to visit the Curious Oddities shop for a humble, but growing, collection of delightful things.

Brass Monocle Necklace on Copper Chain by Curious Oddities

BoingBoing has alerted us to a marvellous multi-channel fiction and photography project called Dr. Julius T Roundbottom. The puppetmaster of this fascinating world is Jeremiah Tolbert, who says of the project:

“It’s a little fantasy, a little steampunk, a little clockpunk, and I hope a hell of a lot of fun. The comment community that has grown up around the site respond to the stories in their own characters, and the characters of the site have a dialog with them. The audience, through comments, influence the direction of the story, often introducing new concepts to the world building.” [via BoingBoing]

The site structure is essentially a blog, beautifully designed in steampunk style, which follows the adventures of Dr Roundbottom, a naturalist studying faeries in City Park. Each post is fiction written in the first-person voice of the good doctor, with a few other characters thrown in. Tolbert accompanies his posts with high-quality art photography. He has also established an ‘encyclopedia’, a tikiwiki to expand and flesh out worldbuilding aspects of the site (there’s that quasi-spectral hypertext again)

I particularly love that readers are encouraged to engage with and extend the narrative by posting comments “in character” and conducting dialogue with Dr Roundbottom and his colleagues. Tolbert is monetising the narrative through sale of photographs and premium memberships to the site. I imagine there are any number of other ways he could introduce income streams to this, especially once the community builds up around it.

If you ever thought what a Clockpunk plane would look like but could never quite figure it out, Kenneth Rougeau answers this question for you in Flights of Fancy.

This box is small enough to sit on a large coin, the jewel swivels and catches the light when it swings out.

I’m packing up the power tools for an art retreat, and finding that there is not really a good way to pack a drill, dremel, saw, hammer, scrap metal, varnishes, paints, and so many bits and pieces!  I am really looking forward to this, I had been planning on making some much larger pieces and some jewelry this month, but maybe what I do this week will change those plans.

I always find myself drawn to those who push beyond the surface, and really dive into the craft that carries their art. Anyone who has seen work by the extremely talented clock builder Eric Freitas will understand why I was compelled to get in touch with him. Eric builds timepieces in his Michigan workshop that are the perfect marriage of delicious aesthetic and hand-built quality.

“In some part I’m making clocks this way to celebrate the mechanics of clocks by making the parts themselves pieces of art.”

Each component is painstakingly designed, cut, contoured and aged by hand. The completed clocks almost always look exactly like the preliminary sketches, which are beautiful on their own.

Eric’s mechanical clocks are especially intriguing as their gears and working parts are exposed. In this world of digital devices, who’s inner workings are a mystery to most, it is a pleasure to see the mechanism- to see how the pieces all work together. They resemble something old and solid, part of our human history, but have been manipulated to appear from a different place or time-not quite our own. Eric was kind enough to answer some questions for me.

I appreciate the exposure. Thank you!

I have to laugh a little when I get this question, because I’m not sure I always knew. It started as a whim; a simple idea of contradicting the structure often found in timepieces, with forms that were so strange and random that the time was almost unreadable. I created these rusty, gnarled clock faces and used plastic motors to control the hands. Then, half-jokingly, my friend said “you know, what you should do is make the gears and everything, and make them look all gnarled to match the faces”. It was practically a dare. One of those inaccessible ideas that sounds spectacular, but no one ever really follows through with. I think the difficulty of this undertaking was alluring to me. I was just ready for something bigger than the painting I’d done previously, and this idea seemed like it would be worth the hard work. There’s something very inviting, and gravitating about seeing mechanical things at work. I wanted to make these strange, and almost inhuman-looking clocks to really invoke curiosity and astonishment in people.

Learning how to machine all of those parts was without question one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Prior to this, I’d only used art supplies, so every little step was foreign to me. Having a teacher certainly would have made the process faster, but looking back I’m very glad I did it myself. There are plenty of books available on clockmaking, and I liked the personal nature of working through all of the problems myself. Just me in my garage, with some machines I didn’t know how to use, and some books I didn’t quite understand yet. I think learning from a traditional clockmaker would have put me in the wrong mindset. I needed to be able to say “why not?”, and not have an answer.

The mechanical clocks are made completely by hand. They’re powered by a weight, and regulated by a pendulum swinging back and forth. The quartz clocks have faces that involve the same kind of style and metalwork, but the hands are turned by a commercial motor. I definitely prefer the mechanical clocks, but I really do love some of the things happening with the quartz ones as well. They’re a great way for me to try different visual things in a very immediate and unrestricted way. Also, there are some designs that are simply better suited for a motorized piece. The integrity of the sketch is what’s most important, so if a design looks cluttered with gears, I won’t use them.

On August 16th, at the Hamptons Antique Galleries, an eight day show will begin that’s boldly titled “STEAMPUNK-THE NEW GENRE OF ART+DESIGN”. There have been shows that implied the idea, or sort of danced around the label in the past. I think It’s great that Art Donovan, the curator of the show, is just putting the word out there in big bold letters. He knows this is a hot movement right now, and that a lot of people are curious about it. Part of steampunk is taking the old technology we love so much, and pushing it to new levels that were never achieved because something new replaced it. It’s easy to latch on to this romanticized version of the past, because in today’s world, we’re surrounded by so much plastic and mass production; the soul has been ripped out of the things that we use on a daily basis. This is the aspect of steampunk that I identify with. I’m creating functional objects that are very personal, and have a lot of life in them. For this show, I’ll be including two of my mechanical clocks, No.2 and 3, and my fourth quartz piece. I’ve also got a new one in store for everyone. A quartz clock that incorporates working gears on the face! I’m very excited about this, because it offers a taste of the mechanical clocks, without winding or maintenance.

If you are going to be in New York in August, be sure to head down to the STEAMPUNK-THE NEW GENRE OF ART+DESIGN exhibit.  Now there is a fine excuse for a road trip!

You can view more of Eric Freitas’ work, including sketches and detail shots, on his Flickr pages. His personal website also contains more information about the designing/building process, and regular updates on his projects- the site is beautifully designed and well worth a visit!

Mainspring by Jay Lake
Paperback List Price: 7.99 
Pages: 386  ISBN: 978-0765356369
Publisher:  Tor 
Kindle format available?: No
Sony eReader format available?: No

The Plot: Hethor Jacques, a simple clockmakers apprentice, receives a visit from one of God’s angels who he believes to be Gabriel. The mainspring of the world is winding down. If the Key Perilous is not found, the heart of the world will stop ticking and God’s greatest work will cease to be. Hethro’s journey will take him far beyond the equatorial wall to the south and away from his simple home in Connecticut forever.

My Thoughts: Meh. It was okay. The visual concept Lake created was interesting, much along the lines of William Paley’s divine watchmaker theory for intelligent design. His Earth is an irreducibly complex mechanism of brass plates and gears. The ticking of the world can be heard by only a few as it turns on a fixed metal track around the sun. Many place names are familiar, but a number of things contrast greatly against our own known history. England never lost the war and still rules over the American territories, and the navy does have a fleet of airships! I love airships, I really do.

My problems with the book were that Hethor never really took on too much depth in the story until the last chunk, but by then it was too late to really do much. The same could be said of most of the supporting characters in the story as well. Characters would be kidnapped only to show up again, only to disappear and the reappear only to die without actually doing anything. They moved through Hethro’s quest, but they didn’t really further it actively for the most part. And as I mentioned, Hethor just wasn’t a strong enough character to really drive the story forward. It wasn’t a hard read, and the story did move along at a good pace.  I won’t write it off as a completely negative experience.  I reiterate, it was okay.  

I also have a problem when authors interpret a West Indian accent as placing the word “Mon” at the ends of sentences and that’s it. I grew up in the Carribean, and I can tell you that the dialect is so much richer than that. Granted this is a very very small point and should not be a big deal to anyone else as the West Indian character appears only in one scene, but it mattered to me because I have a personal connection to the region.

Apparently this was a couple of years ago but I recently found out that the town of Vinci where Leonardo Da Vinci was born has put the contents of the Madrid Codices and the Codex Atlanticus online. They are also planning to put online digital copies of the Windsor folios and 12 notebooks from the Institut de France for a total of 12,000 pages. Here is a relevant excerpt from Wired.

While the digital notebooks offer advantages to make academics sob with joy — semantic search functions, clustered results — most of them vanish without a working knowledge of 15th-century Italian. (Forms in English are expected in about two months; an index of drawings in English is expected by year’s end.)

To index Leonardo’s designs and irregular vocabulary, text-mining company Synthema teamed up with engineers from the University of Florence and the Accademia della Crusca, Italy’s national language institute founded in 1582.

“Leonardo had a very modern way of jumbling things together, a true multitasker,” says Federico Neri, head of R&D at Synthema. “There are technical specifications next to shopping lists. Finding anything used to be mining in a literal sense.” Neri hopes to eventually develop a multilanguage version to help readers explore the notebooks.

Nonetheless, there are plenty of curiosities for the lay reader.

Even a quick spin may turn up, as it did on a recent once-over of the Codex Atlanticus, the spring-propelled vehicle thought to be a precursor to Mars rovers. And the high-resolution images are arguably as close as one will get to the real thing unless you’re Bill Gates.

There are references to a sketch in the Codex Atlanticus showing the backside of Leonardo’s comely assistant, Salaino, with penises speeding at him. When an e-Leo user’s attempts to find it fail, Taddei recites a folio number from memory with the cool aplomb of a professional used to stewarding odd requests.

The URL for the e-Leo project is as follows: http://www.leonardodigitale.com/ Registration is required but its free.

After my first experiment with metal inclusions, I happened across someone who was kind enough to share her techniques with me. This was done with float glass, which I cleaned meticulously. I made some large frit to place around the metal pieces in an effort to reduce bubbles. So far, so good. Except I neglected to clean the fingerprints off the frit and they may not be so clear in the pic, but they certainly are obvious in person.

Here’s the before and after:

I failed to clean the metal before using it, and I am guessing that’s what caused the blueish haze around the piece on the left. Though in person, the haze is an amber color.

I am surprised the smaller pieces of glass are still clearly visible. I used float glass for this project. The top and bottom pieces were cut from the same glass. The frit was made from a different piece of glass – also float. Another curious observation: the edges pulled away from each other.

Onward to trial number three…

Oh, the joys I find on StumbleUpon, this is probably the coolest Laptop I have ever seen. What the dilema is, is it SteamPunk, or ClockPunk? Drop a comment of what you think, but who cares if It’s steam, clock, sandal, whatever! It’s all good! Anyway…

I found this laptop while mooching around StumbleUpon, but, seeing as I’m me and I’m pretty dim, I forgot to save it, so I had to google it to find it, thank god I found it!

It’s, as the title suggest, a laptop that’s steam/clockpunk. It runs Ubuntu and Windows XP, has USB Ports and all the stuff a normal laptop has!

The violin-style sound holes, or “F-holes” are functional speaker grills covered with black cloth. For a little added redundancy, the original power switch is accessible through the speaker fabric. If you need to do a hard reboot, you can take a pen or pencil and press down on the fabric in the dead-center of the leftmost lobe of the f-hole to contact the button. The original keyboard LEDs now shine through small plastic gems.

- Datamancer.net

There is also a video of how to switch it on and off.

There is a “small, round, brass button” you press to open the disc-drive.

Even the disc-drive looks steampunk-ish with everything else!

http://www.brassgoggles.co.uk/bg-forum/index.php?topic=1359.0%20

That is the thread for it on the Brass Goggles Steampunk Forums.

Thanks to Datamancer.net for this, you’ve made me jealous!

The Clockwork Game is a novelization of the story of the Turk in the form of a webcomic/graphic novel by the artist Jane Irwin. The Turk was a automation “invented” in the 18th century by a Hungarian Wolfgang von Kempelen which could play chess with people. People all across Europe flocked to see the automaton. Of course such technology did not exist back. The Turk was actually a hoax and there was a hidden contraption where a human would play chess but it would appear as if the automaton is playing chess. The automaton was named the Turk because its appearance was like that of the Turk. Most themes in Clockpunk deal with what might have been but as the Turk demonstrates there is plenty of room for exploring the hoaxes, the half-truths and perhaps even Clockpunk conspiracy theories! Anyway here is Jane’s description of the webcomic/ graphic novel.

Clockwork Game is a mostly-true story, a dramtization of actual historical events, retold with as little conjecture as possible. Some characters, whose names and histories were lost to the predations of time, had to be created almost entirely from whole cloth. Strong—but not ironclad—proof exists for the actions depicted in certain scenes. And, of course, dialogue and personalities had to be invented, based on whatever writings were available.

I was drawn to the incredible story of The Turk because it seems far too fantastic to actually be true, and yet with each new book and article, the facts became much more captivating than any fiction I could have created.

Here is an excerpt from the wbecomic. The comic is updated every Thursday.

The reader should also check out Jane Irwin’s official website at this URL.

For people who are interested in the pre-history of automata here is a link to a fascinating article by Elly Truitt whose dissertation I have previously mentioned on this blog. Given below is an excerpt from the article.

What is more remarkable than the presence of these metal people in this romance is the fact that automata in human form were found frequently in the pages of twelfth-century French romances—copper knights and damsels, golden archers, children, and guardians of tombs. The early twelfth-century chanson de geste Le voyage de Charlemagne contains a description of the emperor of Constantinople’s palace, upon which two golden children blow ivory horns and laugh in a lifelike manner when the wind blows. In Le roman d’Eneas, written around 1160, a metal archer ensures that the sanctity of Camille’s mausoleum remains inviolate. Another midtwelfth-century romance, Le conte de Floire et Blancheflor, mentions the speaking, moving statues of the eponymous lovers erected on Blancheflor’s mock tomb. The Roman d’Alexandre, completed around 1180, features two golden youths, made by augury (par augure) and enchantment (enchantement), armed with maces, guarding a drawbridge. In addition, two copper boys, armed with shields and pikes and made by enchantment (enchant) guard the tomb of the emir of Babylon. The First Continuation of Chrétien’s Perceval, completed in the first decade of the thirteenth century, has two figures guarding the tent of Alardin, an “Eastern” potentate, who can discern knight from churl and maiden from nonvirgin, and then bar the entrances of the latter to the tent.