"A collection some amazing steampunk inspired photos by Chuck Coleman"
Source: Chuck Coleman aka Steampunk Chuck
...Steampunk & Rock 'n' Roll!
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Between 2 Worlds...
"Living steampunk to the fullest - a nice little read about the passion of Artists and the magic of this Genre."
From left, Deacon Boondini, the Great Gatsby and Giovanni James of the James Gang share a vision with the designer Alexander McQueen. By RUTH LA FERLA; Published: May 8, 2008
The lead singer of a neovaudevillian performance troupe called the James Gang, Mr. James has assembled his universe from oddly assorted props and castoffs: a gramophone with a crank and velvet turntable, an old wooden icebox and a wardrobe rack made from brass pipes that were ballet bars in a previous incarnation.
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.
To some, “steampunk” is a catchall term, a concept in search of a visual identity. “To me, it’s essentially the intersection of technology and romance,” said Jake von Slatt, a designer in Boston and the proprietor of the Steampunk Workshop (steampunkworkshop.com), where he exhibits such curiosities as a computer furnished with a brass-frame monitor and vintage typewriter keys.
That definition is loose enough to accommodate a stew of influences, including the streamlined retro-futurism of Flash Gordon and Japanese animation with its goggle-wearing hackers, the postapocalyptic scavenger style of “Mad Max,” and vaudeville, burlesque and the structured gentility of the Victorian age. In aggregate, steampunk is a trend that is rapidly outgrowing niche status.
“There seems to be this sort of perfect storm of interest in steampunk right now,” Mr. von Slatt said. “If you go to Google Trends and track the number of times it is mentioned, the curve is almost algorithmic from a year and a half ago.” (At this writing, Google cites 1.9 million references.)
“Part of the reason it seems so popular is the very difficulty of pinning down what it is,” Mr. von Slatt added. “That’s a marketer’s dream.”
Devotees of the culture read Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, as well as more recent speculative fiction by William Gibson, James P. Blaylock and Paul Di Filippo, the author of “The Steampunk Trilogy,” the historical science fiction novellas that lent the culture its name. They watch films like “The City of Lost Children” (with costumes designed by Jean Paul Gaultier), “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “Brazil,” Terry Gilliam’s dystopian fantasy satirizing the modern industrial age; and they listen to melodeons and Gypsy strings mixed with industrial goth.
They build lumbering contraptions like the steampunk treehouse, a rusted-out 40-foot sculpture assembled last year at the Burning Man festival in Nevada and unveiled last month at the Coachella music festival in Southern California. They trawl eBay for saw-tooth cogs and watch parts to dress up their Macs and headsets, then show off their inventions to kindred spirits on the Web.
And, in keeping with the make-it-yourself ethos of punk, they assemble their own fashions, an adventurous pastiche of neo-Victorian, Edwardian and military style accented with sometimes crudely mechanized accouterments like brass goggles and wings made from pulleys, harnesses and clockwork pendants, to say nothing of the odd ray gun dangling at the hip. Steampunk style is corseted, built on a scaffolding of bustles, crinolines and parasols and high-arced sleeves not unlike those favored by the movement’s designer idols:Nicolas Ghesquiere of Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen and, yes, even Ralph Lauren.
Quaint to some eyes, or outright bizarre, steampunk fashion is compelling all the same. It is that rarity, a phenomenon with the potential to capture a wider audience, offering a genteel and disciplined alternative to both the slack look of hip-hop and the menacing spirit of goth.
The elaborate mourning dresses, waistcoats, hacking jackets and high-button shoes are goth’s stepchildren, for sure, but the overall look is “not so much eyeliner and fishnets,” said Evelyn Kriete, who sells advertising space for magazines like Steampunk, The Willows and Weird Tales, and who manages Jaborwhalky Productions (jaborwhalky.com), a steampunk Web site.
Ms. Kriete and her eccentrically outfitted cohort of teachers, designers, writers and medical students, drew stares last week at a picnic at the Cloisters in Manhattan, but provoked no shudders or discernible hostility.
“As a subculture, we are not the spawn of Satan,” Ms. Kriete said. “People smile when they see us. They want to take our picture.”
Robert Brown, the lead singer for Abney Park, a goth band that has reinvented itself as steampunk, echoed her sentiments. “Steampunk is not dark and spooky,” he said. “It’s elegant and beautiful.”
Even heroic, if you like. The movement may have a postapocalyptic strain, but proponents tend to cast themselves as spirited survivors. Molly Friedrich, an artist and a jewelry designer in Seattle, approaches steampunk, she said, “from a perspective of 1,000 years into the future, after society has crumbled but people have chosen to live in Victorian fashion, wearing scavenged clothes.” In keeping with her vision, Ms. Friedrich has devised an alternate identity composed of petticoats, old military storm coats, goggles and aviator caps with an Amelia Earhart flair.
She takes her emotional cues from scientists and inventors like Nikola Tesla, magicians likeHarry Houdini and soulful spies like Mata Hari, each of whom injected a spirit of enterprise, intrigue and discovery into their age. Contemporary fictional parallels in film include the wildly ingenious scientist played by Robert Downey Jr. in “Iron Man,” who hopes to save the world by retooling himself as a flame-throwing robot made of unwieldy scrap metal parts.
If steampunk has a mission, it is, in part, to restore a sense of wonder to a technology-jaded world. “Today satellite photos make the planet seem so small,” Mr. Brown lamented. “Where is the adventure it that?” In contrast, steampunk, with its airships, test tubes and time machines, is, he said, “sort of a dream , the way we used to daydream. It’s like part of your childhood’s just bursting forward again.”
For some of its adherents, steampunk also offers a metaphoric coping device. “It has an intellectual tie to the artists and artisans dealing with a world in turmoil at the time of the industrial revolution,” said Crispen Smith, a Web designer and photographer in Toronto, and a partner in a steampunk fashion business.
Now, as in the late 19th century, “we have to find a way to deal with new ethical quandaries,” Mr. Smith said, alluding to issues like cloning, the dissemination of information and intellectual property rights on the Web.
Steampunk style is also an expression of a desire to return to ritual and formality. “Steampunk has its tea parties and its time-travelers balls,” said Deborah Castellano, who presides over salonconvention.com, which organizes neo-Victorian conventions. “It offers an element of glamour that some of us would otherwise never experience.”
And an enticing marketing hook. The Bombay Company is selling steampunk-style brass home accessories, instruments like astrolabes and sextants. A steampunk fantasy game, Edge of Twilight, will be introduced by Xbox 360 and PlayStation next year.
And steampunk fashion, which until now has been a mainstay of craft fairs and destinations like eBay and Etsy, the online market for handmade clothing designs and artifacts, is finding its way into the brick and mortar world.
Gypsymoon.com has begun offering its cream and umber petticoats, an Air Pirate ruched tunic and Time Machine bloomers at boutiques. Abney Park is selling swallowtail tuxedos, antiqued flight helmets and airship pirate T-shirts, like those it wears on stage, atabneypark.com and at concerts across the country.
Mr. James, who performs with his troupe at the Box, the music-hall hideaway on the Lower East Side, has just leased space for a steampunk shop in NoLIta. He plans to offer brass Rubik’s cubes, riding boots, early-20th-century-style motorbikes, handmade leather mailbags and brass or wooden iPhone cases, all under the label TJG Engineering.
There will, of course, be a clothing line with vintage and new looks modeled on Mr. James’s own neo-Edwardian sartorial signature. “I’m so sick of baggy pants hanging off your bottom,” he said. “This is more refined. It goes back to a time when people had some dignity.
“It’s a new day.”
From left, Deacon Boondini, the Great Gatsby and Giovanni James of the James Gang share a vision with the designer Alexander McQueen. By RUTH LA FERLA; Published: May 8, 2008
“MEET Showtime,” said Giovanni James, a musician, magician and inventor of sorts, introducing his prized dove, who occupies a spacious cage in Mr. James’s apartment in Midtown Manhattan. Showtime is integral to Mr. James’s magic act and to his décor, a sepia-tone universe straight out of the gaslight era.
The lead singer of a neovaudevillian performance troupe called the James Gang, Mr. James has assembled his universe from oddly assorted props and castoffs: a gramophone with a crank and velvet turntable, an old wooden icebox and a wardrobe rack made from brass pipes that were ballet bars in a previous incarnation.
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.
To some, “steampunk” is a catchall term, a concept in search of a visual identity. “To me, it’s essentially the intersection of technology and romance,” said Jake von Slatt, a designer in Boston and the proprietor of the Steampunk Workshop (steampunkworkshop.com), where he exhibits such curiosities as a computer furnished with a brass-frame monitor and vintage typewriter keys.
That definition is loose enough to accommodate a stew of influences, including the streamlined retro-futurism of Flash Gordon and Japanese animation with its goggle-wearing hackers, the postapocalyptic scavenger style of “Mad Max,” and vaudeville, burlesque and the structured gentility of the Victorian age. In aggregate, steampunk is a trend that is rapidly outgrowing niche status.
“There seems to be this sort of perfect storm of interest in steampunk right now,” Mr. von Slatt said. “If you go to Google Trends and track the number of times it is mentioned, the curve is almost algorithmic from a year and a half ago.” (At this writing, Google cites 1.9 million references.)
“Part of the reason it seems so popular is the very difficulty of pinning down what it is,” Mr. von Slatt added. “That’s a marketer’s dream.”
Devotees of the culture read Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, as well as more recent speculative fiction by William Gibson, James P. Blaylock and Paul Di Filippo, the author of “The Steampunk Trilogy,” the historical science fiction novellas that lent the culture its name. They watch films like “The City of Lost Children” (with costumes designed by Jean Paul Gaultier), “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “Brazil,” Terry Gilliam’s dystopian fantasy satirizing the modern industrial age; and they listen to melodeons and Gypsy strings mixed with industrial goth.
They build lumbering contraptions like the steampunk treehouse, a rusted-out 40-foot sculpture assembled last year at the Burning Man festival in Nevada and unveiled last month at the Coachella music festival in Southern California. They trawl eBay for saw-tooth cogs and watch parts to dress up their Macs and headsets, then show off their inventions to kindred spirits on the Web.
And, in keeping with the make-it-yourself ethos of punk, they assemble their own fashions, an adventurous pastiche of neo-Victorian, Edwardian and military style accented with sometimes crudely mechanized accouterments like brass goggles and wings made from pulleys, harnesses and clockwork pendants, to say nothing of the odd ray gun dangling at the hip. Steampunk style is corseted, built on a scaffolding of bustles, crinolines and parasols and high-arced sleeves not unlike those favored by the movement’s designer idols:Nicolas Ghesquiere of Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen and, yes, even Ralph Lauren.
Quaint to some eyes, or outright bizarre, steampunk fashion is compelling all the same. It is that rarity, a phenomenon with the potential to capture a wider audience, offering a genteel and disciplined alternative to both the slack look of hip-hop and the menacing spirit of goth.
The elaborate mourning dresses, waistcoats, hacking jackets and high-button shoes are goth’s stepchildren, for sure, but the overall look is “not so much eyeliner and fishnets,” said Evelyn Kriete, who sells advertising space for magazines like Steampunk, The Willows and Weird Tales, and who manages Jaborwhalky Productions (jaborwhalky.com), a steampunk Web site.
Ms. Kriete and her eccentrically outfitted cohort of teachers, designers, writers and medical students, drew stares last week at a picnic at the Cloisters in Manhattan, but provoked no shudders or discernible hostility.
“As a subculture, we are not the spawn of Satan,” Ms. Kriete said. “People smile when they see us. They want to take our picture.”
Robert Brown, the lead singer for Abney Park, a goth band that has reinvented itself as steampunk, echoed her sentiments. “Steampunk is not dark and spooky,” he said. “It’s elegant and beautiful.”
Even heroic, if you like. The movement may have a postapocalyptic strain, but proponents tend to cast themselves as spirited survivors. Molly Friedrich, an artist and a jewelry designer in Seattle, approaches steampunk, she said, “from a perspective of 1,000 years into the future, after society has crumbled but people have chosen to live in Victorian fashion, wearing scavenged clothes.” In keeping with her vision, Ms. Friedrich has devised an alternate identity composed of petticoats, old military storm coats, goggles and aviator caps with an Amelia Earhart flair.
She takes her emotional cues from scientists and inventors like Nikola Tesla, magicians likeHarry Houdini and soulful spies like Mata Hari, each of whom injected a spirit of enterprise, intrigue and discovery into their age. Contemporary fictional parallels in film include the wildly ingenious scientist played by Robert Downey Jr. in “Iron Man,” who hopes to save the world by retooling himself as a flame-throwing robot made of unwieldy scrap metal parts.
If steampunk has a mission, it is, in part, to restore a sense of wonder to a technology-jaded world. “Today satellite photos make the planet seem so small,” Mr. Brown lamented. “Where is the adventure it that?” In contrast, steampunk, with its airships, test tubes and time machines, is, he said, “sort of a dream , the way we used to daydream. It’s like part of your childhood’s just bursting forward again.”
For some of its adherents, steampunk also offers a metaphoric coping device. “It has an intellectual tie to the artists and artisans dealing with a world in turmoil at the time of the industrial revolution,” said Crispen Smith, a Web designer and photographer in Toronto, and a partner in a steampunk fashion business.
Now, as in the late 19th century, “we have to find a way to deal with new ethical quandaries,” Mr. Smith said, alluding to issues like cloning, the dissemination of information and intellectual property rights on the Web.
Steampunk style is also an expression of a desire to return to ritual and formality. “Steampunk has its tea parties and its time-travelers balls,” said Deborah Castellano, who presides over salonconvention.com, which organizes neo-Victorian conventions. “It offers an element of glamour that some of us would otherwise never experience.”
And an enticing marketing hook. The Bombay Company is selling steampunk-style brass home accessories, instruments like astrolabes and sextants. A steampunk fantasy game, Edge of Twilight, will be introduced by Xbox 360 and PlayStation next year.
And steampunk fashion, which until now has been a mainstay of craft fairs and destinations like eBay and Etsy, the online market for handmade clothing designs and artifacts, is finding its way into the brick and mortar world.
Gypsymoon.com has begun offering its cream and umber petticoats, an Air Pirate ruched tunic and Time Machine bloomers at boutiques. Abney Park is selling swallowtail tuxedos, antiqued flight helmets and airship pirate T-shirts, like those it wears on stage, atabneypark.com and at concerts across the country.
Mr. James, who performs with his troupe at the Box, the music-hall hideaway on the Lower East Side, has just leased space for a steampunk shop in NoLIta. He plans to offer brass Rubik’s cubes, riding boots, early-20th-century-style motorbikes, handmade leather mailbags and brass or wooden iPhone cases, all under the label TJG Engineering.
There will, of course, be a clothing line with vintage and new looks modeled on Mr. James’s own neo-Edwardian sartorial signature. “I’m so sick of baggy pants hanging off your bottom,” he said. “This is more refined. It goes back to a time when people had some dignity.
“It’s a new day.”
Source: nytimes.com
Batman's Helmet
"D.C. here's an idea for the next movie: If Batman Went Steampunk, He’d Wear This Helmet"
Hand cut and moulded. Hand painted and aged, riveted together using brass rivets to give it a steampunk vibe.
Color: dark brown and black
Material: 7-8oz Eco friendly veg tanned cowhide leather
Hardware: brass rivets and buckle
It seems like everyone is going steampunk these days. Batman isn’t exactly the kind of guy who follows trends, but if Alfred talked him into it, he’d try and he’d probably go for a handmade mask like this one by Skinz-N-Hydez. You could build this mask and an entire outfit to go with it for a convention or a renaissance faire. Here’s what it was made from:
Color: dark brown and black
Material: 7-8oz Eco friendly veg tanned cowhide leather
Hardware: brass rivets and buckle
Source: adafruit.com
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Hugo...a must see!
"A successful adaption to Brian Selznick's book: The Invention of Hugo Cabret - a fantastic steampunk movie by Mr. Martin Scorsese!"
"Hugo" is unlike any other film Martin Scorsese has ever made, and yet possibly the closest to his heart: a big-budget, family epic in 3-D, and in some ways, a mirror of his own life. We feel a great artist has been given command of the tools and resources he needs to make a movie about — movies. That he also makes it a fable that will be fascinating for (some, not all) children is a measure of what feeling went into it.
In broad terms, the story of his hero, Hugo Cabret, is Scorsese's own story. In Paris of the '30s, and schooling himself in the workings of artistic mechanisms. That runs in the family. Hugo's uncle is in charge of the clocks at a cavernous Parisian train station. And his father's dream is to complete an automaton, an automated man he found in a museum. He dies with it left unperfected.
Rather than be treated as an orphan, the boy hides himself in the maze of ladders, catwalks, passages and gears of the clockworks themselves, keeping them running right on time. He feeds himself with croissants snatched from station shops and begins to sneak off to the movies.
His life in the station is made complicated by a toy shop owner named Georges Melies. Yes, this grumpy old man, played by Ben Kingsley, is none other than the immortal French film pioneer, who was also the original inventor of the automaton. Hugo has no idea of this. The real Melies was a magician who made his first movies to play tricks on his audiences.
Leave it to Scorsese to make his first 3-D movie about the man who invented special effects. There is a parallel with the asthmatic Scorsese, living in Little Italy but not of it, observing life from the windows of his apartment, soaking up the cinema from television and local theaters, adopting great directors as his mentors, and in the case of Michael Powell, rescuing their careers after years of neglect.
The way "Hugo" deals with Melies is enchanting in itself, but the film's first half is devoted to the escapades of its young hero. In the way the film uses CGI and other techniques to create the train station and the city, the movie is breathtaking. The opening shot swoops above the vast cityscape of Paris and ends with Hugo (Asa Butterfield) peering out of an opening in a clock face far above the station floor. We follow his Dickensian adventures as he stays one step ahead of the choleric Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), in chase sequences through crowds of travelers. Hugo always manages to escape back to his refuge behind the walls and above the ceiling of the station.
His father (Jude Law), seen in flashbacks, has left behind notebooks, including his plans to finish the automaton. Hugo seems somewhat a genius with gears, screws, springs and levers, and the mechanical man is himself a steampunk masterwork of shining steel and brass.
One day Hugo is able to share his secret with a girl named Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), who also lives in the station, and was raised by old Melies and his wife. She is introduced to Hugo's secret world, and he to hers — the books in the cavernous libraries she explores. These two bright kids are miles apart from the cute little pint-sized goofballs in most family pictures.
For a lover of cinema, the best scenes will come in the second half, as flashbacks trace the history and career of Georges Melies. you may have seen his most famous short film, "A Trip to the Moon" (1902), in which space voyagers enter a ship that is shot from a cannon toward the moon; the vessel pokes the Man in the Moon in the eye.
Scorsese has made documentaries about great films and directors, and here he brings those skills to storytelling. We see Melies (who built the first movie studio) using fantastical sets and bizarre costumes to make films with magical effects — all of them hand-tinted, frame by frame. And as the plot makes unlikely connections, the old man is able to discover that he is not forgotten, but indeed is honored as worthy of the Pantheon.
Not long ago, I saw a 3-D children's film about penguins. I thought it was a simpleminded use of the medium. Scorsese uses 3-D here as it should be used, not as a gimmick but as an enhancement of the total effect. Notice in particular his re-creation of the famous little film "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat" (1897), by the Lumiere brothers. You've probably heard its legend: As a train rushes toward the camera, the audience panics and struggles to get out of its way. That is a shot which demonstrates the proper use of 3-D, which the Lumieres might have used had it been available.
"Hugo" celebrates the birth of the cinema and dramatizes Scorsese's personal pet cause, the preservation of old films. In one heartbreaking scene, we learn that Melies, convinced his time had passed and his work had been forgotten, melted down countless films so that their celluloid could be used to manufacture the heels of women's shoes. But they weren't all melted, and at the end of "Hugo, " we see that thanks to this boy, they never will be. Now there's a happy ending for you.
"Hugo" is unlike any other film Martin Scorsese has ever made, and yet possibly the closest to his heart: a big-budget, family epic in 3-D, and in some ways, a mirror of his own life. We feel a great artist has been given command of the tools and resources he needs to make a movie about — movies. That he also makes it a fable that will be fascinating for (some, not all) children is a measure of what feeling went into it.
In broad terms, the story of his hero, Hugo Cabret, is Scorsese's own story. In Paris of the '30s, and schooling himself in the workings of artistic mechanisms. That runs in the family. Hugo's uncle is in charge of the clocks at a cavernous Parisian train station. And his father's dream is to complete an automaton, an automated man he found in a museum. He dies with it left unperfected.
Rather than be treated as an orphan, the boy hides himself in the maze of ladders, catwalks, passages and gears of the clockworks themselves, keeping them running right on time. He feeds himself with croissants snatched from station shops and begins to sneak off to the movies.
His life in the station is made complicated by a toy shop owner named Georges Melies. Yes, this grumpy old man, played by Ben Kingsley, is none other than the immortal French film pioneer, who was also the original inventor of the automaton. Hugo has no idea of this. The real Melies was a magician who made his first movies to play tricks on his audiences.Leave it to Scorsese to make his first 3-D movie about the man who invented special effects. There is a parallel with the asthmatic Scorsese, living in Little Italy but not of it, observing life from the windows of his apartment, soaking up the cinema from television and local theaters, adopting great directors as his mentors, and in the case of Michael Powell, rescuing their careers after years of neglect.
The way "Hugo" deals with Melies is enchanting in itself, but the film's first half is devoted to the escapades of its young hero. In the way the film uses CGI and other techniques to create the train station and the city, the movie is breathtaking. The opening shot swoops above the vast cityscape of Paris and ends with Hugo (Asa Butterfield) peering out of an opening in a clock face far above the station floor. We follow his Dickensian adventures as he stays one step ahead of the choleric Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), in chase sequences through crowds of travelers. Hugo always manages to escape back to his refuge behind the walls and above the ceiling of the station.
His father (Jude Law), seen in flashbacks, has left behind notebooks, including his plans to finish the automaton. Hugo seems somewhat a genius with gears, screws, springs and levers, and the mechanical man is himself a steampunk masterwork of shining steel and brass.
One day Hugo is able to share his secret with a girl named Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), who also lives in the station, and was raised by old Melies and his wife. She is introduced to Hugo's secret world, and he to hers — the books in the cavernous libraries she explores. These two bright kids are miles apart from the cute little pint-sized goofballs in most family pictures.
For a lover of cinema, the best scenes will come in the second half, as flashbacks trace the history and career of Georges Melies. you may have seen his most famous short film, "A Trip to the Moon" (1902), in which space voyagers enter a ship that is shot from a cannon toward the moon; the vessel pokes the Man in the Moon in the eye.
Scorsese has made documentaries about great films and directors, and here he brings those skills to storytelling. We see Melies (who built the first movie studio) using fantastical sets and bizarre costumes to make films with magical effects — all of them hand-tinted, frame by frame. And as the plot makes unlikely connections, the old man is able to discover that he is not forgotten, but indeed is honored as worthy of the Pantheon.
Not long ago, I saw a 3-D children's film about penguins. I thought it was a simpleminded use of the medium. Scorsese uses 3-D here as it should be used, not as a gimmick but as an enhancement of the total effect. Notice in particular his re-creation of the famous little film "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat" (1897), by the Lumiere brothers. You've probably heard its legend: As a train rushes toward the camera, the audience panics and struggles to get out of its way. That is a shot which demonstrates the proper use of 3-D, which the Lumieres might have used had it been available.
"Hugo" celebrates the birth of the cinema and dramatizes Scorsese's personal pet cause, the preservation of old films. In one heartbreaking scene, we learn that Melies, convinced his time had passed and his work had been forgotten, melted down countless films so that their celluloid could be used to manufacture the heels of women's shoes. But they weren't all melted, and at the end of "Hugo, " we see that thanks to this boy, they never will be. Now there's a happy ending for you.
Source: rogerebert.com
New Homage to Jules Verne...the Steampunk way!
"Always amazing to see people putting so much effort and detail in these things:
Fabulous New Illustrations for a Steampunk Homage to Jules Verne"
I first met Mahendra—a self-described "ink-stained wretch"—nearly twenty years ago when I saw a collection of totally convincing postage stamps he'd created, based on the premise that the Confederacy had won the Civil War (he eventually condescended to provide the uncanny illustrations for my anthology, Pathetic Selections). His beautiful work, which is often disturbing and almost invariably rendered in pen-and-ink, evokes the surrealistic collages of Max Ernst (whom Singh admits has been an enormous influence on his art).
Singh recently adapted Lewis Carroll's surrealistic poem, "The Hunting of the Snark", as a graphic novel. As a long-time member of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America and an editor for their journal, theKnight Letter, Singh—who describes himselfas a "Carrollian Nutter...harmless as long as I have access to drawing materials. And pictures of Snarks"—was uniquely suited for the task.
His illustrations are as much a kind of intellectual treasure hunt—full of riddles, puns, and allusions—as the poem is itself. Singh is also one of the contributing illustrators to the recent New York Times best-selling Adventure Time Encyclopaedia (of all things), created by card-carrying genius Martin Olson. I may as well add a plug for Olson's The Encyclopaedia of Hell,which also was illustrated by Singh. About as different as two books could possibly get...
When young, Singh read everything "from 70s SF to Aristophanes to the Ramayana... What I usually liked was a complex, completely furnished fictional world, along with a nice musicality with words. What really turned me on was when that fictional world would be logically intertwined with the real world, past or present." It seemed natural that one of the authors Singh admired was Jules Verne—a sterling quality we both share. And, like me, he has always had a fondness and admiration for the beautiful woodcuts that accompanied the original editions of Verne's novels (as one of the best-selling authors of his time, Verne's books demanded and got the best illustrators in the business).
When BSFA award-winning Adam Roberts wrote his new steampunk novel-tribute to Jules Verne, 20 Trillion Leagues Under the Sea, that it needed Mahendra Singh's illustrations was probably a no-brainer. "Why not," Singh asked, "illustrate steam-punk with a visual style that actually reminds the reader of the Victorian era?" This was no doubt also the reasoning behind Singh being chosen to illustrate Jean-Christophe Valtat's steampunk epic, Luminous Chaos. Like Franklin Booth, the classic American illustrator of the 1920s, Singh evokes the appearance of the woodcut illustrations of the 19th century by means of a meticulous pen-and-ink style that has a uniquely compelling quality of its own. Just as it's hard to imagine Alice in Wonderlandwithout Sir John Tenniel, it may be that for future generations it will be hard to imagine Jules
Fabulous New Illustrations for a Steampunk Homage to Jules Verne"
Mahendra Singh is an illustrator best known for work that is meticulously researched, intelligent to the point of phosphorescence and executed with obsessive craftsmanship. It should go without saying, then, that his illustrations for steampunk Jules Verne tribute 20 Trillion Leagues Under the Sea are nothing short of fantastic.
I first met Mahendra—a self-described "ink-stained wretch"—nearly twenty years ago when I saw a collection of totally convincing postage stamps he'd created, based on the premise that the Confederacy had won the Civil War (he eventually condescended to provide the uncanny illustrations for my anthology, Pathetic Selections). His beautiful work, which is often disturbing and almost invariably rendered in pen-and-ink, evokes the surrealistic collages of Max Ernst (whom Singh admits has been an enormous influence on his art).His illustrations are as much a kind of intellectual treasure hunt—full of riddles, puns, and allusions—as the poem is itself. Singh is also one of the contributing illustrators to the recent New York Times best-selling Adventure Time Encyclopaedia (of all things), created by card-carrying genius Martin Olson. I may as well add a plug for Olson's The Encyclopaedia of Hell,which also was illustrated by Singh. About as different as two books could possibly get...When young, Singh read everything "from 70s SF to Aristophanes to the Ramayana... What I usually liked was a complex, completely furnished fictional world, along with a nice musicality with words. What really turned me on was when that fictional world would be logically intertwined with the real world, past or present." It seemed natural that one of the authors Singh admired was Jules Verne—a sterling quality we both share. And, like me, he has always had a fondness and admiration for the beautiful woodcuts that accompanied the original editions of Verne's novels (as one of the best-selling authors of his time, Verne's books demanded and got the best illustrators in the business).
Source: io9.com
Ever heard about...bathing machines ?
"So Men couldn't get their Rocks off......a rather wacky element from Victorian times."
IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURIES, ENTIRE FLEETS OF MACHINES KEPT BEACHGOING WOMEN FROM DOING THE WALK OF SHAME.
An account written in 1847 describes the rather plush interior of one of these machines:
To be fair, when they originally debuted in the 1750s, bathing machines weren't quite as prudish as they ultimately became: In their earliest days, it was still common for men and women alike to swim nude. But by the time Victorian mores took hold (1837, per Queen Victoria's reign), bathing machines were horrifyingly ubiquitous on European and American beaches despite the fact that the swimsuits of the time revealed barely anything at all.
IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURIES, ENTIRE FLEETS OF MACHINES KEPT BEACHGOING WOMEN FROM DOING THE WALK OF SHAME.
Compared to our barely clad, spaghetti-strapped swimsuit styles, the bathing costumes of the 18th and 19th century seem laughably prudish. But those days, people worried that glimpsing more than a sliver of a woman's ankle might give onlookers the vapors. This was such a concern, in Georgian and Victorian times (roughly 1714 to 1901), that entire fleets of bathing machines were designed to prevent anyone from seeing a woman in her swimsuit before she slipped into the waves.
European beaches began filling up with bathing machines starting in the 1750s, and those machines stuck around, remarkably, until the 1920s. They resembled wooden changing booths, with wheels and wooden steps that led inside. In a nutshell: A woman walks into the booth, changes, and when she's ready a horse gets hitched to the machine and drags her out to sea, at which point the machine becomes a floating changing buoy. Once the machine plunged far enough out into the ocean waves, the woman could quickly dive off the float. And so it went. Thanks to these boxy hideaways, no one got scandalized by said woman's (decidedly unsexy) bathing tarpaulin.
An account written in 1847 describes the rather plush interior of one of these machines:
"The interior is all done in snow-white enamel paint, and one-half of the floor is pierced with many holes, to allow of free drainage from wet flannels. The other half of the little room is covered with a pretty green Japanese rug. In one corner is a big-mouthed green silk bag lined with rubber. Into this the wet bathing-togs are tossed out of the way. There are large bevel-edged mirrors let into either side of the room, and below one juts out a toilet shelf, on which is every appliance. There are pegs for towels and the bathrobe, and fixed in one corner is a little square seat that when turned up reveals a locker where clean towels, soap, perfumery, etc. are stowed. Ruffles of white muslin trimmed with lace and narrow green ribbons decorate every available space."
To be fair, when they originally debuted in the 1750s, bathing machines weren't quite as prudish as they ultimately became: In their earliest days, it was still common for men and women alike to swim nude. But by the time Victorian mores took hold (1837, per Queen Victoria's reign), bathing machines were horrifyingly ubiquitous on European and American beaches despite the fact that the swimsuits of the time revealed barely anything at all.
By the 1920s (whew), bathing machine were all but extinct. Yet even today, you can sometimes see bathing machines on the beach. Horses may not drag the carriages to sea anymore, with women shunted inside, but some of these bathing machines survive as beachside huts.
Source: fastcodesign.com / John Brownlee
Steam Giants in Action!
"Still keeps fascinating people all over the planet - everybody should take the chance to see the initiators of the industrial revolution back to life!"
THERE will a chance to see giant steam engines in action at Brede Waterworks this weekend when two open days take place on Saturday and Monday.
The engines are housed in the old waterworks building in the Brede Valley and have been lovingly restored to working order by Brede Steam Engine Society.
It is a labour of love which has taken place over many years. The magnificent triple expansion steam water pumping engines date from 1904 and 1940. They were first used to pump water up from below the valley floor to supply the surrounding area and nearby Hastings.
The collection also comprises electrical and diesel pumping equipment as well as records from the old waterworks.
Brede Steam Engine Society hold open days throughout the year on the first Saturday of each month, and on bank holiday Mondays from 10am - 4pm.
They are happy to talk to people about the ongoing project and share a wealth of knowledge.
A Cold War nuclear bunker, next to the waterworks building, will also be open.
Admission to the open days is free.
Refreshments are available and there is adequate free parking. John Foxley. From the Steam Engine Society, said: “Come along and enjoy the atmosphere of water pumping heritage engineering at its British best.”
He added: “We are always looking for new members with an interest in the water industry to join our ranks.”
Brede Waterworks is signposted from the A28 at the top of Brede Hill by St George’s Church.
For more information on the engines visit the website www.bredesteamgiants.co.uk.
Source: ryeandbattleobserver.co.uk
Monday, April 28, 2014
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