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Topic: SteamPunk Philosophy (manifesto from the Catastraphone Orchestra) (Read 1800 times) |
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Professor Calamity
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SteamPunk:
Colonizing the Past so we can dream the future
For us, Steampunk is a re-envisiong of the past, with the hypertechnological perceptions of the present. Unfortunately most so-called “steampunk” is simply dressed up recationary nostaligia with the stifling tea-room manners of Victorian imperialists and their faded maps and visions of colonial hubris. It is a sepia-toned yesteryear more appropriate for Disney and spinsters than a vibrant and viable philosophy or culture.
First and foremost, steampunk is a non-luddite critique of technology. It rejects the ultra-hip dystopia of the cyberpunks with their black rain and nihilistic posturings; while simulatenaously forfeiting the conceit of the noble savage fantasy of the pre-technological era. It revels in the reality of technology, its very beingness as oppossed the over anlyitical abstractness of cybernetics. Steam technology is the difference between the nerd and the mad scientist. Steampunk machines are real, breathing, coughing, struggling and rumbling parts of the world. They are not the airy intellectual fairies of alogorythmic mathematics but the hulking manifestations of muscle and mind. The progedy of sweat, blood, tears and delusions. The technology of steampunk is natural, it moves, lives, ages and dies. It is the first real technology, just as God animated clay with breath, man animated lifeless metal with steam. Steampunk, like the mad scientist, refuses to be fenced in by the ever growing cages of specializations. Leonardo DaVinci is the steampunker touchstone, a blurring of lines between engineering and art. Fashion and function mutually dependent like piston and steam. Authentic steampunk seeks to take the levers of technology from the technocrates and the powerful who seek to drain it of both its artistic and real power and turn the living monsters of technologies into the simpering servants of meaningless commodity.
Authentic Steampunk is not an artistic movement but an aethestic technological movement. The machine is freed from the chains of effeciency and to embrace desire and dreams. The sleekness of optimal engineering is replaced with the necessary ornamentation of true function. Imperfection, chaos, chance and obsolence are not to be seen as faults but as ways of allowing spontaneous liberation from predictable perfection. The factory of consciousness is overthrown by beautiful entropy. Steampunk creates a seamless paradox between the practical and the fanciful. It expands the horizons of both art and technology by being freed from the maniacal control of man’s puropses. Steampunk technology is neither slave nor master but partner in the exploration of unknowable territories of both art and science.
Steampunk rejects the myopic nostalgia drenched politics of “alternative” cultures. Ours is not the culture of Neo-Victorianism and its stupefying etittiquette, an escapsist retreat to gentlman clubs and classist dictation. It is the green fairy of delusion and passion unleashed from her bottle, stretched across the glimmering gears of our rage. We seek inspiration in the smog choked alleys of Victoria’s duskless Empire. We find solidarity and inspiration with the mad-bombers with ink stained cuffs, with whip-yielding women that refuse to serve , with the coughing chimney sweeps who have escaped the roofs and joined the circus, and with mutineers who have gone native and have handed the tools of the masters to those most ready to use them. We are enflamed by the dockworkers of the Doglands as they set Prince Albert’s Hall ablaze and empassioned by the dark rituals of the Ordo Templi Orientis. We stand with the rebels of the past as we hatch impossible treasons against our present.
Too much of what passes as steampunk, denies the punk. Punk in all of its guises. Punk – the fuse used for lighting cannons. Punk – the downtrodden and dirty. Punk- the agressive do it yourself ethic. We stand on the shaky shoulders of opium-addicts, aesthete dandys, inventors of perpetual motion machines, mutineers, hucksters, gamblers, explorers, madmen and bluestockings. We laugh at experts and consult moth eaten tomes of forgotten possibilities. We sneer at utopias while we await for the new ruins to reveal themselves. We count to ladies or gentlemen in our midst. We are a community of mechanical magicians enchanted by the real world and beholden to the mystery of possibility. We do not have the luxury of niceties or the possession of politeness for we are rebuilding the yesterday and ensuring our tomorrow. Our corsets are filled with safety pins and our tophats hide vicious mohawks. We are fashion’s jackals running wild in the tailorshop.
It lives! Steampunk lives in the reincarnated collective past of shadows and fogotten alleys. It is a historical wunderkabinet, which promises, like Dr. Caligari, to wake the sonambulist of the present to the dream-reality of the future. We are archeologists of the present, reanimating hallucinatory history.
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Yaghish
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Hello Professor! 
Welcome to the GSP forum! I have some questions regarding your writing:
Quote:| Unfortunately most so-called “steampunk” is (...) than a vibrant and viable philosophy or culture. |
Should it be? A philosophy, all right, even bicycle repair has got its own Zen, but a culture? Where does it get its values and laws from? How does steampunk influence the art, the language, the mythology? How can it be a culture when it’s not more than a drop in the ocean 
Quote:| It rejects the ultra-hip dystopia of the cyberpunks with their black rain and nihilistic posturings |
In my opinion, Steampunk, as it came into existence in The Difference Engine (by Gibson & Sterling) was nothing more than that kind of Cyberpunk set in a Victorian background. Hackers and engineers are basically the same, trying to go beyond what’s technology invented for (see for details the Cyberpunk Fakebook).
Quote:| Steampunk machines are real, breathing, coughing, struggling and rumbling parts of the world. |
You should definitely read Shiva 3000 (it’s in the Information on the site, I think you’d like it 
Quote:| The technology of steampunk is natural, it moves, lives, ages and dies. It is the first real technology, just as God animated clay with breath, man animated lifeless metal with steam. |
I disagree on that. Real technology was found in water power (water mills), that were often regarded to as something magic (Millers are considered to be mages), and in a patriotic fit I have to say that windmills in all their appearances are impressive technology as well (if you ever have visited the wooden inside of a working windmill, you’d agree, IMHO  ).
As an engineer, I’d say that modern (computer) technology is moving, living, aging and dying as well, be it on a smaller scale and thus less impressive.
Quote:| Steampunk, like the mad scientist, refuses to be fenced in by the ever growing cages of specialisations. |
Just to keep things clear: you are stating steampunks are homo universalis. Allrounders. Those who know everything there is to learn at university?
Quote:| Fashion and function mutually dependent like piston and steam. |
It still is a classic question of all mixtures of art and techniques: form follows function or ...? Form, Function and Beauty are still struggling over it - especially in applied arts like architecture and webdesign (to name two).
Quote:| The machine is freed from the chains of efficiency and to embrace desire and dreams. |
It’s quite an efficient way to make dreams and desires come true. But I don’t really understand what’s meant 
Quote:| Imperfection, chaos, chance and obsolence are not to be seen as faults but as ways of allowing spontaneous liberation from predictable perfection. |
Somehow, this reminds me of the Windows operating system 
Quote:| Steampunk creates a seamless paradox between the practical and the fanciful. |
I don’t think it’s a paradox, because this mixture between practical and fancy has been achieved before. It was at the end of the nineteenth century, when the “Art Deco” (decorative art) made its way into architecture, which was perfected in the Amsterdam School and the architecture of Berlage. The same can be seen in the objects from the Wiener Werkstätte. It also is the tool in De Stijl movement of whom Mondriaan is the best known example, but it’s Rietveld (trained carpenter became artist and architect) who shows how the paradox can look like. However, De Stijl is no steampunk at all and fits more the sober expressionistic style of people like De Corbusier and the Russian Constructivism.
Or did you mean another amalgam of art form and function?
Quote:| Steampunk rejects the myopic nostalgia drenched politics of “alternative” cultures. Ours is not the culture of Neo-Victorianism and its stupefying etittiquette (...) |
Who are the “we” that claim steampunk as their own? Frankly, I don’t think steampunk can be given a right definition without asking any of the steampunk lovers for their approval of the claim. Which is quite the same with heathens, gothics, and some other movements that have no clear definition that is rooted in history.
Quote:| Too much of what passes as steampunk, denies the punk. Punk in all of its guises. Punk – the fuse used for lighting cannons. Punk – the downtrodden and dirty. Punk- the agressive do it yourself ethic. |
Don’t forget: “Punk - we’re only in it for the money” (a quote by one of the early members of The Damned). But regarding Punk of the 1970s and the cyberpunk of 1980, I guess Punk in steampunk is “the downtrodden masses, the abused by the establishment, the unemployed kicked out of society” 
Quote:| We sneer at utopias while we await for the new ruins to reveal themselves. |
I don’t know, but are you aware of the word Utopia and the way Thomas More used it? It’s Nowhere and More pictured it as a living hell, even when most of the readers still think it’s paradise. In effect, Utopia is the ultimate ruin of society 
Quote:| Our corsets are filled with safety pins and our tophats hide vicious mohawks. We are fashion’s jackals running wild in the tailorshop. |
I gather it’s some kind of metaphor, but I don’t really understand it. It you’re clothes are old and torn, and you can’t afford new ones, you use safety pins to repair them. It’s wasn’t a fashion statement until Malcolm McLaren made it one. The mohawks have been out of fashion since 1977, when the second punk wore one.
Quote:| It is a historical wunderkabinet, which promises, like Dr. Caligari, to wake the sonambulist of the present to the dream-reality of the future. |
Well, in a way, Caligari was a crook in the movie, because he let his somnambulist predict the future (“You’ll be dead by sunrise”), but made sure the future was set to fit the prediction by having the somnambulist make the prediction come true (have him kill the student). It’s no miracle (Wunder) at all. And that future is by no means a dream-reality (given the fact that the last scene in the movie was only filmed because it would be too dark, too gothic, too horrific without it for a 1920s audience).
So much for Das Kabinett des Dr Caligari.
Did I understand that you take steampunk philosophy as a way to guide the fans into a future that is not the dark future with the gloomth of cyberpunk, but a more vivid one where art has a function beyond beauty?
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| « Last change: November 26, 2004, 11:25:15 PM by Yaghish » |
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Prof. Calamity
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Many thanks for your thoughtful response to our little missive. I realize, now only in hindsight, we failed to introduce ourselves properly. I trust you and the gentle pursuers of this forum will forgive our forwardness. I, Professor Calamity am one of the founders of the Catastrophone Orchestra, a steampunk band from new York City. We have been interested in exploring steampunk for quite sometime both artistically (namely music) and its philosophy (thus the article). We are in the process of redoing the Catastrophone a steam and clockwork powered musical instrument that is a combination of of a Calliope and a drumset. We are also, with fellow artists, putting the finishing touches on a graphic novel looking at a steampunk New York, drawing heavily on history and imagination. When that project is completed we will send samples to this forum and a link for the entire graphic novel (steampunk should be free).
Now I submit humbly our response to some of your thought-provoking comments.
Yagish wrote: "Should it [steampunk be a culture] be? A philosophy, all right, even bicycle repair has got its own Zen, but a culture? Where does it get its values and laws from? How does steampunk influence the art, the language, the mythology? How can it be a culture when it’s not more than a drop in the ocean"
Quanity is not a definition of a culture (sub or otherwise). The Lapps may only number a few thousand at most but are definetly a culture. The Futurists were a subculture and never numbered more than twenty at any time. Even the Bolshevicss were but a pretty tiny proportion of the population. I think steampunk is still in its infancy I feel it has potential. We see where the goth movement in Chile has taken on political overtones and punk has had an influence on the anti-globalization movement here and parts of Western Europe. History will decide this question for us.
Your points about windmills and water mills are well taken. Obviously there is a bit of poetic largesse in our proposal. We feel steam power is the real birth of the industrial revolution...a point that could be argued but fits are viewpoint. By the way we love windmills and have a very old one in New York State.
The fact that steampunk arose from the Difference Engine and cyberpunk does not mean it is tied to their parents. The Romantic movement is often said to have been inspired by Milton's Paradise Lost (which is actually anti-romantic) and the Decadent Movement from Huysmans' "Against Nature" which again is actually anti-decadent. We believe that the struggling steampunk movement (in the US anyway) is a rejection of the super hip(ster) fashion, in both art and thought, of the more populous cyberpunk communities.
"The machine is freed from the chains of efficiency and to embrace desire and dreams."
It’s quite an efficient way to make dreams and desires come true. But I don’t really understand what’s meant.
We simply that often technology is created to serve a specific function and is judge by its effectiveness in achieveing stated task. We wish to free machines to be more like art, open to interpetation...free to escsape even the intentions of their makers.
Steampunk rejects the myopic nostalgia drenched politics of “alternative” cultures. Ours is not the culture of Neo-Victorianism and its stupefying etittiquette (...)
Yagith "Who are the “we” that claim steampunk as their own? Frankly, I don’t think steampunk can be given a right definition without asking any of the steampunk lovers for their approval of the claim. Which is quite the same with heathens, gothics, and some other movements that have no clear definition that is rooted in history."
We are the Catastrophone Orchestra. We have lots of intercourse with steampunkers in the US and been involved in a variety of listservs. Our definition is rooted in a history. A history of folks that often are not written about...but with some substantial research their voices can be heard in faint whispers across the ages. They are also echoed in the clubs, squats, rocking boxcars and other cracks in this society. Like the soothing whistling of a tea kettle they can be heard, we believe. While it is true we have not asked permission from others before writing our article but as you can see we are more than willing to engage in dialogue and rethink our positions. We feel this article in a very small and trivial way can be seen as a community builing exercise.
People seemed confused about the punk aspect of steampunk (as you mentioned in your comments). We draw upon some of the principles of the punk scene here in the US that we find valueable. We are vultures taking spare parts from many movements to hobble together steampunk. We think this is one of the more interesting aspects of of the fusion that flows through much of the steampunk genre. There is no doubt many punks were in it for the money, but as you can see that is not our interest. Our publications, music and everything else we produce is without charge. We reject the dark shadow of industrialism-capitalism.
Yagish"Did I understand that you take steampunk philosophy as a way to guide the fans into a future that is not the dark future with the gloomth of cyberpunk, but a more vivid one where art has a function beyond beauty?"
Indeed! We believe that both the spirits and the machines of much of the past were infused with a basic (if not naive') optimism. We reject a death-obsessed culture and revel in a mechanized-paganism where even a tin man can have a heart--even if it is a sputtering steam operated clockwork. We shall produce both monsters and butterflies but they shall all be concieved out of love in a community of infinite possibility ignited by imagination.
Again many thanks for all of your comments (even the ones I did not touch on). I have printed copies for our less computer savvy colleagues.
Your humble servant,
Prof. Calamity
on behalf of the Catastrophone Orchestra
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Yaghish
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Dear Professor,
Feel free to register if you plan to write more 
Quote:| Catastrophone Orchestra, a steampunk band from new York City. |
Ah! That explains a lot. Do you have a website or something to promote the project? There is hardly a chance I’ll ever visit New York.
Quote:| Catastrophone a steam and clockwork powered musical instrument that is a combination of of a Calliope and a drumset. |
Catastrophone sounds good. Even though the mechanism somehow reminds me of steam powered street organs spoiling the streets of Amsterdam with their stupid traditional songs.
What’s the music like? You use other instruments as well? What musical theories do you use, or did you invent new ones?
Quote:| The Futurists were a subculture and never numbered more than twenty at any time. Even the Bolshevicss were but a pretty tiny proportion of the population. I think steampunk is still in its infancy I feel it has potential. |
I would call it movement instead of culture. Apart from the Laps, none of these movements has historical roots or a father-to-son exchange of ideas. But movements can eventually lead to culture, that's true.
Quote:| Obviously there is a bit of poetic largesse in our proposal. |
Yes, but that must be excused for for the benefit of the spreading of the message 
Quote:| We feel steam power is the real birth of the industrial revolution...a point that could be argued but fits are viewpoint. |
Yes, steam power made ideas possible. Ideas coming from the end of the feudal system that happened in the same era. A synergy effect.
Your statement of freeing technology from it’s primal purpose is not a wish but reality. Check out the history of the telephone and its place in society. Or the computer. The TV. No scientist can deny that machines will escape their original purpose.
Quote:| We are the Catastrophone Orchestra. |
That makes clear the we is a “we, not including you” instead of a “we, including you” or even a “we, as a pars pro toto for everyone involved in the movement”. Heh, English is a pretty difficult language at the point where it misses useful words.
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Calamity
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Quote by: Yaghish on November 27, 2004, 01:38:14 PM
Dear Professor,
Feel free to register if you plan to write more
I have just joined the ranks and have sent messages to the more computer savvy of our bunch to join me in this fine society.
Quote:| Catastrophone Orchestra, a steampunk band from new York City. |
Ah! That explains a lot. Do you have a website or something to promote the project? There is hardly a chance I’ll ever visit New York.
Not yet. There seems to be some discussion about whether a web-site is appropriate or not. We are made up of band members from poor fish records, verge and dominant fiction along with some side projects that do indeed have websites but are not steampunk. When we record our next live performance I'll make sure to make the mp3s available (through a link to one of the above sites) along with our graphic novel.
Quote:| Catastrophone a steam and clockwork powered musical instrument that is a combination of of a Calliope and a drumset. |
Catastrophone sounds good. Even though the mechanism somehow reminds me of steam powered street organs spoiling the streets of Amsterdam with their stupid traditional songs.
What’s the music like? You use other instruments as well? What musical theories do you use, or did you invent new ones?
The Catastraphone is pretty far from the steam organ both in terms of construction and sound. Whereas steam organs tend to use very little psi (pounds per square inch) we use in excess of 15-20 psi per boiler. It makes for a very loud and controlled sound. The Catastrophone also is not like an organ with keyboards or piping little notes it is more flexible and complicated. We are trying to attach a complicated clockwork to it for percussion but that may need to be a seperate unit. We use other instruments as well (drums, a sort of electric guitar, keyboard and depending on who is around strings). The music is steampunk- an odd mix of gothic (ala sisters of mercy), historic storytelling (Paul Roland) and philip glass type droning. We also try to incorporate a bit of the feel, if not the actual tonal/tempo systems of traditional music from the lower classes of turn of the century New York City (ala drinking songs and ethnic mixes).
Quote:| Obviously there is a bit of poetic largesse in our proposal. |
Yes, but that must be excused for for the benefit of the spreading of the message
True. Nothing paralizes thought and creativity like marginality. People who feel disempowered often act accordingly.
Your statement of freeing technology from it’s primal purpose is not a wish but reality. Check out the history of the telephone and its place in society. Or the computer. The TV. No scientist can deny that machines will escape their original purpose.
That is true but we work it in from the beginning. If one of the hoses leaks (which often happens) we try to work that sound in. The boilers start to rumble or bang we use that. We are not seeking some perfection. We build things first then figure out a use...if there is one. It is a difference in mind set. It is like the sculptur who sees something in a piece of stone and tries to release it or a sculptur that predetermines what they wish to create and searches for the proper raw materials to use.
Quote:| We are the Catastrophone Orchestra. |
That makes clear the we is a “we, not including you” instead of a “we, including you” or even a “we, as a pars pro toto for everyone involved in the movement”. Heh, English is a pretty difficult language at the point where it misses useful words.
Our english is poor mongrel language but we love her nonetheless.
Prof. Calamity
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Zgh87g56A4
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Whatever happened to the Catastrophone Orchestra anyway?
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kiskolou
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Would anyone mind me posting the original manifesto-thingie on the brass-goggles forum? It's just that a lot of them are just neo-victorians, and i want to hear thier opinions.
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Yaghish
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In fact you should ask the Professor, because he wrote the manifesto (the LiveJournal might have an email address).
Other solutions:
1. Google and try to find the text elsewhere (maybe on the ol' Journal of the professor himself)
2. Don't copy it, but just link to this topic.
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Prof. Calamity
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Dear Fellow-travellers,
I am happy to report that Screaming Mathilda, Neal List, Pip and your very own Prof. Calamity are still in NYC doing our work and presenting the political and musical benefits of steam. We most recently had our old manifesto (the topic of this thread) and one of our stories published in steampunkmagazine, my understanding there is a web-site of the magazine at steampunkmagazine com We hope that in the next issue there will be more ramblings and rants from the CO. In addition there are but a few songs we have produced though no recording disk as of now. However for the less patient of you we can send you an electronic copy of the songs for your amusements.
We look forward to playing a live show when we can find a venue willing to accept the possibility (though I ensure you quite remote) of some explosion. We assume in a city of 8 million some brave soul will come forward and allow us to perform our craft to the acoustically hungry denizens of our fair burg.
Until such time we shall continue to keep our feet in the gutter and eyes stretched to the tops of our skyscrappers.
With all sincere humility,
Prof. Calamity
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