Steampunk Philosophy
Is steampunk about Victorian fashion and uber cool mechanical gadgets or is it also about something more? This is a question I have been struggling with for sometime, I am a goth from the late 80’s and I associate that subculture with an aesthetic sense of beauty that embraces the macabre with values alienation and hedonism within a frame work of self reflection. Since becoming more involved with the steampunk subculture the question of philosophy has been gnawing at my mind. ...
Most popular media on Steampunk tends to focus on the appearance and not the beliefs,the Board Magazine has one such hollow description. The current wikipedia page covers the topic in one sentence: “ Some have proposed a steampunk philosophy, sometimes with punk-inspired anti-establishment sentiments, and typically bolstered by optimism about human potential ” with a reference to Andrew Swerlick's Technology Gets Steampunk'd. Andrew's article goes on to explain that “Steampunk is the assertion of the individual, the rejection of the mass-produced for the uniquely crafted — the refusal to be labeled as a faceless consumer. ”
Although I agree with Andrew’s anti consumerism I believe the movement also has other philosophical underpinning in a DYI culture that empowers the individual. In the New York Times Article, Steampunk Moves Between 2 Worlds, the author picks up on the “make-it-yourself ethos of punk” which I see as integral to steampunk. I have yet to meet a steampunk that does not hack or make something original. Often fashion and technology are customized to a point at which it is barely recognizable as the original object it once was. These actions point to a strong sense of self at the core of steampunk. I would love to hear others thoughts on what they thing steampunk philosophy is or is not.
The above image was added for three reasons 1) all posts should have images, as a visual learner I often remember what I wrote by the image not the title. 2) the image is of a ocular of eye piece that changes the way you see things, I hope this post gives you least a moment of pause on the meaning of steampunk 3) the image is under a copyright license that allows others to remix and reuse the art, which is see as part of the philosophy of steampunk.
Photo: Steampunk Ocular By topgold Bernard Goldbach under Creative Commons BY License
Articles:
.png)
Comments
Steampunk philosophy
I have been thinking about this myself for the last three years or so, and it came up again this morning as I prepared my steampunk 'kit' for an evening meeting with a student film director. What is it that makes Steampunk different from other subcultures? It can't just be a fashion trend. There's a certain sense you develop after a while, where you look at an item that is neo-victorian, but know it isn't steampunk. It's something in the way the item originated and effect that has on the meaning it generates.
My current working and very nebulous definition is that Steampunkers are part of the DIY/Maker culture - they choose to create their own cultural experience using objects of their own making/altering, in defiance more common and easily available mass consumption offerings. I think this ties into a nostalgic urge for a simpler creation culture, when individuals had more opportunity to personalise and add more value to the objects that created their environment.
Having said that, this definition is built on shifting sands and could change. The lack of clear definition is one of the things I like about steampunk. As well as defending steampunk from mainstream commercialisation, the lack of definition means that you can make it whatever gives you the greatest joy.
As part of watching the people around me personalise their definition, I have also come to accept that some steampunkers don't make, but support makers by buying what they create; that the aesthetic is nostalgic, but not necessarily neo-victorian and that makers can include anyone - managers, typologists, writers, businesses, photographers, musicians, poets and dancers as well as tailors, tinkers and jewellers.
Geography / retro-sifi
Thnks for adding to the conversation - PQR
I agree that it is built on shifting sand, and the more people I meet especialy in differning geographic regons the more my own defintion changes. Following ones biss whether that be through fasion or tinkering is certianly part of it.
Philosophy
I think about this a lot. If I buy steam punk merchandise am I still true steampunk? Where's the DIY? But somebody made it and it looks like steampunk. On the other hand if I paint my plastic toys brass and silver does that make me steampunk? The philosophy is the key.
I usually explain to friends that steampunk is taking a technology to its ultimate potential. If steam hadn't progressed to electricity and diesel where would it have gone? What is the most that mankind accomplish with the fewest resources? Steam blimps, steam computers, steam music machines, etc.
Then there's steampunk style. Thats the physical manifestation of steampunk without the substance. Thats where your picture fits in. There's a pressure gauge on it just for show. It doesn't affect the actual operation so its just style. But its how people identify us so it has its place.
Buying v. DYI
I think that supporting a small custom market is another key. We each have skills we can share and when hanging out in maker spaces people often ask what do you have to trade, there is a market built on good will and uniqueness not just cash. I am all for supporting artists with cash also but I like being able to barter from time to time and bartering seems encouraged in this subculture.
Philosophy
I have tried to take my design esthetic from the design of victorian scientific equipment - meant to be useful and repairable, the designers/makers nevertheless made them as beautiful as possible rather than strictly utilitarian. I specifically reject the modernist/Bauhaus credo of "form follows function" or the trend in modern art that stripped everything down to only what is barely required. I also hold to the following points:
There is value in unique items
There is value in hand-crafted items
There is value in items that are made and/or customized by the end-user
-Most mass-produced items should be altered/customized to function/look better than the original
The use of plastics and other man-made (petroleum-derived) materials should be avoided where possible
My Philosophy
It has to be fun.
Fun
hehe interesting point. SP seems a little less angry the punk. More embracing of what we can do then raging against what is.
Are we having fun yet?
I think to many people forget the one immutable reason for doing anything steampunk is for the enjoyment that you and others can have from it. To many long-winded philosophies and hard core doctrines just leads to endless bickering and elitism, and I don't think anyone wants to hear or see to much of that.
more than a love of burnished copper and brass?
I know this is an older thread but since there are so few conversations about SP philosophy I wanted to join one this before too much time passes. As a writer I've been trying to figure out what makes SP different from any other speculative genre where “what if...” is the sole guiding principle. One of the components I often hear about SP is the DIY aspect to it and how no two Steampunkers are the same and yet a simple Google search shows me the exact opposite: there is a very rigid Victorian chic uniform that defines the “SP look” (why is it that all male Steampunkers look like either Abraham Lincoln or Lord Byron with gears glued all over them?) This isn't to say I am unfamiliar with the tropes: Gaslight Village London/ mad scientists in their zeppelins/ Wells and Verne/ steam powered golems/ the movie Wild, Wild West. But is that all?
One of the issues I have, coming at it as a writer, with a statement like, SP takes “technology to its ultimate potential,” as one commenter put it, is that ALL science fiction does this, in one form or another. One might argue SP is just as rigid in its vision of technology as it is in its fashion since “ultimate potential” always seems to necessitate coal-powered dirigibles, analog computers and ornate submarines. Is Retrotronics, then, the anchor that sets SP off from everything else? What makes SP different, say, from Historical Science Fiction or Retro SciFi?
I am not trying to dismiss the genre, I find the style fascinating to the eye, however, I am having trouble in understanding if there is anything more to it than a love of vacuum tubes, crushed velvet, burnished copper and brass?
I had to reply to your post
I had to reply to your post because I find so few articles written on the philosophy or psychology of steampunk. I also came out of the goth era, first involved in the early days and then heavily involved in the 90's as a publisher of a goth magazine, "The Howling" for seven years. I ended up writing an article on the psychology of the goth movement because of the paradox of the similarities and the creative individualistic natures of the artists, writers and photographers I worked with over the years on the magazine.
Now, as I become involved in the steampunk world as the publisher of Steampunk Fissure magazine and as an author and recent facilitator of an author panel at the Upstate Steampunk Con in Greenville, SC, I find myself asking parallel questions. I find that a lot of philosophy is going into my current WIP, a steampunk novel, which led me to attempt to write an article on the psychological and philosophical angles. The shifting sand metaphor is a good one, because steampunk seems to be an open ended culture. When it stagnates or becomes restricted, someone comes in and changes it up.
I believe the intense nature of the fascination with steampunk is strongly based on the inability for our cultures to make us feel safe or individual. The dystopian settings for many of the novels prove the level of frustration many people fell with both commerce and government and the DIY and Maker aesthetics is a attempt for the individual to feel as if he/she can have an effect on society. The creativity is what encourages me, because of its unlimited viewpoints and potential, as opposed to the feeling of giving up many cultures feel when society becomes oppressive or just screwed up.
I believe there are layers and layers of philosophical and deep psychological reasons why people embrace steampunk, and yes, fun is a big part of it, but I also believe there are powerful societal and cultural issues being addressed, a discussion that is too long to go into here. But I'm glad to see that other people are looking at the more abstract concepts of steampunk and viewing the motives for why it seems to be attracting those, who for a number of reasons felt disenfranchised and unheard in many consumer-driven cultures.
Counter-industrialism?
Sorry I'm late to the conversation, but this is something I think about too. I've found that different people have very different specific reasons for appreciating Steampunk, but there are certain things that I find quite widespread. I'm going to focus on the relationship between Steampunk and industrialism.
As we can all agree. the genre takes a great deal of inspiration from the nineteenth century in the forms of literature, technology, fashion and other elements. We often talk about taking the technology of the time to its extremes, but in some ways that is exactly what we don't do. It is real history that did that, if one considers that modern electrical power stations run on steam and that today's factories are directly descended from the steam-driven mills of those supposedly halcyon days.
The truth is that the Victorian world (perhaps particularly England and her empire) was in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, which I consider to have reached its height in the nineteenth century (feel free to correct me). The revolution came with billowing smokestacks and pulsating steam cylinders, fine clockwork and precise machining, great dreams and hopes for the future of mankind! Oh yes, these are the things we choose to remember in our genre, the best of the industrial revolution.
But ours is an era of contradiction, as this genre reflects. In the modern world we are subject to, benefactors and victims of, an industrial commercial complex that straddles the globe. People today know luxury and opportunity beyond the dreams of our ancestors, carried onward by matching technology. Still, there is much discontent. We are disenfranchised, the individual a small piece of a larger machine. Few of us are able to fully explore the opportunities that the world claims to offer, we live in the shadow of commercial industry, fed by it even as we are imprisoned.
This too links to the Industrial Revolution. Before those advances in technology, production was achieved largely by means of cottage industry. In that era, individual craftsmanship was the norm. Resources and products were scarce and expensive, without the mass production of later times, and life was hard; yet, in that dog-eat-dog world, every person had the chance for individual accomplishment. Well, more or less.
Steampunk, it seems to me, reaches back into the heart of the Industrial Revolution and tries to undo the damage that was done; we embrace the power of technology and its potential to fulfill our dreams, but we recoil at mass production and the ruination of the craftsman. It is more than an aesthetic, more than literature, it is a deep-seated urge to restore the finest of craftsmanship. This is no easy task, but is served well by the Maker culture and is, it seems to me, becoming more widespread beyond either of these subcultures.
I am well acquainted with the presence of those whose interest is purely out of fashion; there is no wrong in that, such people provide an outlet for the creatives. Similarly, there are those whose interest lies solely in Steampunk literature and art, which may speak to them of who knows what. Still, for those of us who find hope in philosophies like (or unlike) that which I have outlined or those which others have, there is the whole.
Steampunk Philosophy
I agree with everything you said about Steampunk and Industrialism. To me, the biggest attraction to Steampunk as a way of looking at the world is the attempt to re-capture the "great dreams and hopes for the future of mankind", and the sense of unlimited possibility that permeated the era (without the aura of impending doom that has been the hallmark of our post-industrial world). I am also a huge fan of the trend in some steampunk circles towards greater civility, courtesy and a somewhat more formal tone of discourse.
I've been thinking about this quite a lot, looking for the philosophical core of Steampunk, and I think I have boiled it down to this: Steampunk finds mechanisms and devises to be intrinsically attractive, and worthy of admiration. Far too often, these mechanisms are hidden and/or made to be unobtrusive - we believe that mechanisms can and should be visible and beautiful. As an extension of this, we feel that the craftsmen, the artisans, the mechanics, makers and hackers are the people who should be celebrated and admired. By embracing the Neo-Edwardian/Victorian aesthetic, we reject the modernist, Bauhaus, industrial aesthetic in which form must follow function, lines must be clean and unadorned, smaller/thinner is always better, and designers/engineers/craftsmen are anonymous and under appreciated..
Revelation of mechanism
Bobzchemist, I like what you said about revealing mechanisms and I think you're right. Hiding mechanisms can take away from a device, which I've always found to be true even of electronics. (Remember the transparent Gameboy? I always wanted one.) This is why I particularly like functional Steampunk, going beyond 'the look'.
You make a good point about civility, as well. I have sought, since childhood, to comport myself in a civil manner and sometimes forget its place in the Steampunk subculture.
Transparent and open source
I remember the old transparent gameboys, they rocked. I agree that seeing how this work brings out the wonder in them, while hiding them in shells makes them more distant. I also see a compatiblity between open source and steampunk for the same reasons. We want to tinker and understand as core values.
Philosophy vs. Style
I feel that the idea of Steampunk is more style and less philosophy. The merging of the past (okay, a certain past) with the cutting edge present to produce a work of art that has a futuristic look.
We've heard this one many times and I tend to agree with it as a definition;
The future as seen through the eyes of a very imaginative past.
If Jules Verne had his way, this is what our present would look like.
A computer keyboard with typewriter keys set in a brass frame...
A guitar amp that resembles a 1930's wood tube radio...
A pair of sun glasses fashioned like a mad scientist's goggles...
You get the idea....
I don't feel any philosophy behind these creations and don't need to.
I just love the style.
Okay... Back to my time machine. I have work to do.
Great topic!
Best wishes!
-Buster Brightbuckle
-
RE: Philosophy vs. Style
Thanks for the comments Buster. You are not alone in viewing steampunk as a style several people I ask the question of what is steampunk philosophy look at me quizzically not fathoming it as part of a philosophy movement. Making and creating beauty through he lens of the path is certainly paramount.
The follow up question that I ask is does looking at the world through goggles change how you interact with reality?
Does dressing with style and individuality change the way other interact with you?
For some the philosophy is not an a priori or intentional aspect of steampunk, but something that grows out of the different but common experiences we have resulting from our stylistic choices.
Style and persona
(Wow! Look at all of the replies to this topic. Nice!)
Although I don't see the genre or style as a philosophy, I believe we can view it philosophically.
I think the attraction to the genre/style is through, what Jung describes as, projection and the actually donning of the "Bat-gear" is about persona.
Does donning your Bat-gear change how people interact with you? It could. It all depends on if they are seeing you beyond the persona or not and how well they know you. Seeing that guy speed down the street on his Harley Hog, wearing leather and biker club colors could make you lean on a stereotype if you hadn't talked to that same weekend warrior at the water cooler the day before where he was wearing the corporate white shirt and blue tie. Same guy, different persona.
An old friend on the road, many years ago, once said to me "you are not the Cadillac."
He was telling that youthful version of me that it really did not matter which car I drove up the road in. I am not the car. I am not the Cadillac.
The same goes for Steampunk style. We are not the style. We are not the goggles. We are not the jackets, hats, piping, brass or watches. We just enjoy the style. And those who dress in the style, paint in the style, write in the style... They are just saying "me too."
I believe we can look at the Steampunk style philosophically, but the style itself is not a philosophy. It's simply a statement.
It's a vehicle to communicate with others... But we are not the vehicle.
Okay. Gotta' scoot. My time machine has been overheating and requires a new electro-mag compression coil. Much work to do.
Great topic!
-Buster Brightbuckle