Andrea Lynn Kaplan shows off her homemade steampunk outfit
Andrea Lynn Kaplan’s outfit suggests that she may not be from around here. Her long black skirt, looking like something from a century ago, was sewn from a tapestry fabric. A flower brooch with a stamen made of watch innards decorates her corset top.
She wears a miniature top hat covered in pennies and keyboard keys, fingerless studded gloves and an armband consisting of a soundcard and panic button. However, the first thing curious passers by ask about is the wooden box with protruding valves and gauges and a clock center that is strapped to her back.
“Oh, that’s my time machine,” Kaplan explains.
When a passing man asks if her outfit is steampunk she smiles and says, “Yep.”
“Five years ago there’s no way someone would have recognized it,” Kaplan says.
The steampunk aesthetic combines the styles and technology of the Victorian age with elements of modern science fiction, adventure, and fantasy genres. Intricate, ornamental, anti industrial and universally applicable in nature, steampunk has found its popularity among various niche communities.
It is being applied to everything from clothing and gadget modifications to artistic reinterpretations of Star Wars and classic myths. Some see it as a return to the elaborate custom designs of the Victorian era. Some view it as a backlash against the norms of mass production and others just think it looks cool.
Kaplan, a 27 year old graphic designer from Manhattan, was introduced to the style two years ago by a sculptor friend. She describes steampunk as “things that couldn’t possibly work in the real world but when they’re made you want them to.”
“Once you know what it is you can find it everywhere,” she explains, citing Joss Whedon’s, wild west meets outer space series, Firefly, and Hayao Miyazaki’s modern fairy tale Howl’s Moving Castle as sharing the anachronistic aesthetics of steampunk.
Kaplan, however, “never really took to the literature.” Instead she found herself impressed by the music and style of groups such as, Dr. Steel, Abney Park and the Dresden Dolls. A graphic designer by trade, she is a fan of “the art part, I like making things to wear and using it as a creative outlet.”
The Time Machine
The Steampunk Laboratory, not to be confused with the similarly named Steampunk Lab, is a monthly workshop run out of the Columbus Idea Foundry by Alex R. Bandar. The workshop teaches interested students real world techniques like welding, soldering and electrical etching in the form of steampunk themed construction projects.
Bandar came across Jake Von Slatt’s Steampunk Workshop blog while on an “art quest” and was very impressed by Von Slatt’s typewriter based keyboard modifications. After browsing the site, Bandar decided to try out the galvanized etching technique that Von Slatt used to customize an iPod. Von Slatt shares the process that goes into all of his projects on his blog. Bandar encountered issues and e-mailed Jake about them. Jake responded with the solutions he had found and Bandar realized that steampunk could become a great learning and teaching opportunity.
He explains that in the pre-Industrial age of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, “if you wanted to make something you had to figure out how to make it yourself, and then invent the tools you needed to make it.” He sees the rise of websites like Instructables.com and MAKEzine as a reemergence of the drive for invention with the added benefit of being able to share one’s inventions with the world.
Mike Perschon is a comparative literature PhD candidate at the University of Alberta who shares the research for his dissertation on the steampunk aesthetic on his Steampunk Scholar blog. He believes that the growing popularity of steampunk as an aesthetic style can be attributed to “its Victorian approach to visual style” and the necessarily higher degree of “artifice and craftsmanship” that goes into it.
“One need only look at the difference between their home computer and the Steampunked ‘difference engines’ which Steampunk makers like Jake von Slatt and Datamancer have produced to see what I mean,” explains Perschon.
He also laments the overlooked nature of what he believes to be the “heart of the culture” the artistic steampunk reinterpratations of myths and popular books and movies that are growing popular among communities of online artists.
Writer, creative commons advocate and co-editor of BoingBoing.com, Cory Doctorow recently wrote an article for MAKEzines latest steampunk themed issue. In the article he explained how he sees steampunk as a way of lashing out against “the mechanization of human creativity.” Quoting Steampunk Magazine’s motto of “Love the Machine, Hate the Factory,” Doctrow envisions a world of desktop artisans, united through the internet, helping each other out and sharing their work with the world.
Perschon describes steampunk as a “grassroots culture.” He sees the lack of “canonical” works as allowing for a level of “creativity and agency” that other fan cultures do not.
The self made nature seems to be a necessary part of the definition of the style.“Putting a sticker picturing gears and brass-work onto your Ipod doesn’t make it Steampunk. Doing what Von Slatt did, by actually engraving his, does,” says Perschon.
Kaplan, the time machine wearing graphic designer, responding to a recent MTV News profile on the style and fears of imminent commercialization explains that, “There is more to steampunk than a pair of brass goggles.”
