If'n you're in the SF bay area, I hight suggest checking out this group show bennifiting RoboGames 2010. (Disclaimer: I am in the show, but so are a heck of a lot of other great artists).

Automatic for the people.

Do sentient machines dwell on the existential circuit that leads to the spiritual 404 error?

Does being a machine mean just being a device: literarily, artistically and literally?

Or does everything just boil down to everyone’s deep-seated need to crush all humans and plot eventual total world domination? Find out at Automatic!

November 19, 20, 21, 2009
Exhibit: 5pm-8pm / Beer and wine reception 7pm-12pm on Fri & Sat
@ The lowerDeck Gallery – 2295 3rd Street (below Sundance Coffee in San Francisco)

Robot Paintings and Sculptures from the prodigious talents of: Doctor Popular * Josh Ellingson * I-Wei Huang * Simon Cox * Nils Jawa * Jonathan Foote * Camp Peavy * Alice Koswara * Max Chandler * Eliot K. Daughtry * Adam Davis * Patrick Lake * Phoneticontrol * Mike Hales * Bill Robinson, Liz Mamorsky, Meredith Scheff and many many others!

*”My God, it’s full of robots!” 

I made a little watercolor for you guys. It's a lady and her marshmallows..and welding gear.

you can see various stages of the painting on my ustream channel.

It's up for sale in my Etsy Store.

[Larger version behind the cut]

A few weeks ago, over some fine whiskey, Jake von Slatt asked me if I would be interested in writing for Steampunk Workshop on the topic of fashion trends within the genre. Part of me jumped for joy at another opportunity to collaborate with Jake...and admittedly, a voice in my subconscious whined "What's left to talk about steampunk fashion? It's been at the summit of the internet zeitgeist for years, it's been done to death with a gaggle of goggles and shades of sepia, and it's mainstreamed."

However, these reasons are exactly why I do have a lot of things to say about steam fashion. While it has popularized to the point of being represented at cons and clubs, and while it has appeared this week (albeit unnamed as such) in the New York Times, steampunk has not become highly visible as a common street fashion trend. Or, if it has become a fashion trend, it hasn't yet entirely metamorphosed into a functional, sustainable style. Fashion lasts a season (if that); style is internal, eternal, and transcends time. Sound familiar?

In yesterday's post, Jake quoted the author of the NY Times article, David Colman, saying “There are all kinds of societies that are about dressing up in period costume and then going back to your oversize jeans the next day,” he said. “This is about style as a way of being.” [emphasis Jake's] And this very style is precisely what I intend to talk about in my posts here. I want to talk about a wider vintage influence on modern style, not just bastardized Victoriana. I want to avoid things already labeled with the dreaded s-word or coated in functionless gears. I want to talk about DIY and bespoke, as well as off-the-rack. I want to talk about attainable and affordable garments that can be acquired for a plethora of body types and sizes and genders, not just what's chic for a femme in size 0 with the funds to buy couture. I want to talk about clothing that can be worn to work, not just to parties or LARPs. I want to talk about color, not just brown and cream. And, I want to talk about the notion of accessorizing both yourself and your surroundings in a way that makes you feel like you're living the dream.

Oh, and just to spite Mister Colman, I want to make certain he understands, very clearly, that we are not hipsters.

Who am I to open this discussion? My name is Libby Bulloff, and I'm no fashionista. I'm a photographer in Seattle. I take brightly-colored portraits of wonderful people from a variety of subcultures. I also contribute to Steampunk Magazine, and I have my own project blog called Exoskeleton Cabaret.

Please let me know in the comments if there's a specific subject you'd like to see covered in future posts, or say hello! Thanks to Jake for adding me to the Steampunk Workshop family.

[Photo by Libby Bulloff of Finn von Claret and David S Dowling in Gasworks Park, Seattle.]

In addition to contributing here in word form, I am also a cartoonist and illustrator. I don't always do steampunk thematic stuff, but today I am. So, for your viewing pleasure, im going to be Ustream-ing the watercolor-ing of the above drawing.

Are your ears burning? They should be because the New York Times is talking about you.  David Colman's This just in from the 1890's is a laundry list of Steampunk influence in fashion and style - yet the 's' word is nowhere to be seen!

Not long ago, big brass-buttoned military coats looked a bit extreme. So did high-button, high-lapel vests and slim tweed trousers. And so did guys who tucked said trousers into high, old-fashioned hunting boots. Now these clothes (along with those ever-present beards and mustaches) look like downtown defaults...

I've been seeing more and more examples of creative folks clearly drawing inspiration from Steampunk but shying away from the 's' word.  That's sure to upset some people but I truly have no problem with it.  I draw inspiration from myriads of things and people around me and it would be impossible to site every single thing that touched or influenced me.

As with home design, where curio cases, taxidermy and other stylish clutter of the Victorian era have been taken up by young hipsters, many of today’s popular men’s styles have their roots in the late 19th century.

[Read More for the rest . . .]

While I was out in Seattle I got to know a fellow named Noah Beasley. I've known Noah online for a while and ran into him oh so briefly at Maker Faire, but the moment I stepped into his place I knew that we would hit it off because there was an 80% finished RepRap machine sitting on his work table!

Noah is an industrial designer who has begun to turn his skills to the production of jewelery and art.  One of the really neat things that Noah is pursuing is the use of 3D metal printing for the creation of fine jewelery and he's beginning to offer some of these pieces for sale now on Etsy:

Though these earrings may resemble an xenomorphic sea creature, we can neither confirm nor deny that they were modeled after any organism living, dead, or bearing any blood relation to our board of directors.

This item is made of 3D printed, bronze infused stainless steel, and so has been lovingly crafted by robots. 

[More are now available and I've updated the link above. - Jake]

Bruce writes:

Hi Jake,

Attached are a couple current images of my 20 sector Wimshurst machine based on your construction article, with changes made as needed to suit locally available materials and to resolve some issues that showed up after the initial construction. 

Click through to the full set of pictures, this is a very elegant machine and some of Bruce's innovations make it superior to my own!

Numisi writes:

...I write to you to represent the Italian Steampunk community. We have worked hard for a year to make this community emerge, trying to make people know what Steampunk is also in Italy . . .we know that there are a lot of Italian Steampunks out there, but only a few know we exist, so, we need a hand by someone known like you to reunite all of them.

Our url is http://steampunk.forumcommunity.net, and the name of the website is Laboratory of Time. We'd be glad if you read something of our website, and if you have problems with the language, simply ask for everything you want to know: everyone there speaks English, so you would be soon answered!

Best regards,

Numisi Nebulosa

The spread of Steampunk throughout the worlds is both amazing and wonderfully exciting to me! I can't wait to see the mods that are sure to come out of  Italy in the near future. Everyone brings a bit of their own aesthetic and culture to this genre and with Italy's history of artistic expression, fashion, and design; the results are sure to be something special!

A very nice documentary about the Steampunk exhibition at the Oxford Museum of the History of Science.

This exhibition was curated by Art Donovan who you will recall did a similar gallery show in the Hamptons last year.

[Via Make:Blog]

I have several 6 volt lantern flashlights kicking around the shop.  However, I never use them because I generally baulk at the $7 they want for a lantern battery that can't be recharged.

So I modded a flashlight to take a 6 volt 4 Ah lead acid battery I bought at Home Depot . . .