events

Well it's October at last!  Here at the Workshop most of our projects will go on hold while we prepare for Hallowe'en, but I do plan to take a few days off to attend SteamCon in Seattle!  Tor books has a great interview with Steamcon Vice Chair Diana Vick that will give you an idea of what to expect.  One take-away I got from the interview is the limited availability of tickets for the Saturday night concert with Abney Park, Unwoman, and Vernian Process.

Get yours now and I'll see you there!

Those masterful mavens of music promotion,
Bulloff and Brugh Present:

WAYFARERS OF THE GYPSY MANSION - a musical bazaar of sorts
with HUMANWINE, THE BLACKBIRD ORCHESTRA, NATHANIEL JOHNSTONE,
TOY BOX TRIO, MEISCE, FINN VON CLARET, and DJ Q.

Sunday, May 10, 2009 3 pm to 10 pm
The Little Red Studio
750 Harrison Street, Seattle, WA
ALL-AGES, $15 donation

Wearables, craftables, and edibles provided by a plethora of local and regional artisans. We will take a dinner break (with DJ) at 6:30 pm - please bring your own sack meal, a picnic to share, or food can be acquired from two of our vendors. Vegan options available. Adult beverages can be purchased by 21+ individuals.

Willow and Libby are justifiably excited about bringing HUMANWINE to Seattle! Friends from Sock Dreams will also be arriving from Portland to vend excellent foot/legwear.

Larger poster is here. Leave a comment here if you’d like to help out at the event or hang flyers–Libby has an 11×17 hi-res PDF in the wings for print-yr-own. Spread the word. All are welcome.

These are the times, my friends. And these are the days. Where the world becomes malleable, palpable. When novelty and genius are within our reach. We are cautioned against being passionate about these things by tales of progress turned to greed and of technology turning on us. And yet, the golden light is just right, the clocks are synchronizing, the stars are in alignment.

This is what we celebrate tonight. We celebrate these transient times, with these transient artists.

- c. lantz

[You may remember HUMANWINE from Make:TV Episode 103 which you can view after the cut - just skip ahead to 7:50, no need to sit through any of that other guy, again. This looks to be an absolutely AMAZING event and I desperately wish I could be there! - Jake]

"Dammit, I'm on the wrong coast" is becoming an almost constant refrain for this Boston based Steampunk!

However, all of my friends in San Francisco and Los Angeles will be on the right coast this March when that crew of drunken pilots and great friends of The Steampunk Workshop comes your town to play a couple of all ages shows!

But no matter where you are, if you've never heard their music before you owe it to yourself to go to The Abney Park Vault and have a listen!

Hi Everyone!  I'm in Seattle now hang'n with rockstars and anarchists for a couple of days of decompression post SteampoweredCon in San Jose.  Steampowered turned out to be a really great event with lots of fascinating people of an even broader spectrum then the already broad spectrum I expected.

My flight was delayed and as a result I was exhausted and a bit shaky when I arrived to give my keynote with only minutes to spare.  The room was at capacity and the crowd quickly made me feel at home. I gave my prepared speech and then unveiled the Wimshurst Machine which I built for an article that will appear in Make Magazine early next year.

Then I brought Jeff VanderMeer up and we announced the fact that on Monday we signed with Artisan Books to write a book on Steampunk!  The book will be highly visual and project oriented and will draw from and highlight all corners of the community.  I'm really excited about this project and really, really happy to be working with Jeff who is a consummate professional and really nice guy.  It was also kind of neat that we shared the announcement, and in fact our first meeting in the flesh, with a thousand or so attendees at the Con!

The following is the complete text of my keynote - it's un-copyedited or proofed so please ignore the typos!

You should also have a look at Alex Soojung-Kim Pang's Reflection on Tinkering from which I borrowed liberally for the speech as it was incredibly relevant to the ideas I wanted to convey that night.

Steampunk Keynote

What sort of future were you promised? When I was young they told me I'd have robotic servants to tend to my every need, cars that would drive themselves while I read the newspaper and vacations in orbiting space hotels. When I was a bit older they promised me ecologically friendly communities where we would all live together in geodesic domes in our white jump suits.