Fantasy Retro: Steampunk as art

[altivo]

Some of you may well be aware of this. I'm probably late to discover it. I knew about "steampunk" as a writing genre, but was unaware of it as a genre in art until just the last few weeks. It consists of recasting functional and contemporary tools into the forms and stylistics we would expect from the Victorian and Edwardian eras (roughly 1835-1915) and there are a few practitioners who have carried it to magnificent extremes. The photo below shows a "telegraph sounder" that taps out news headlines derived from RSS feeds. Click on the image to reach a gallery and article from Wired magazine that describes the movement and some of its leading artists.



Really now, I don't have time for another hobby. I don't.! But the idea of turning an early microcomputer, such as a TRS80, into one of these things is just irresistible. Or perhaps a cell phone that looks like a pocket watch? An MP3 player with headphones that came right out of the Titanic? The possibilities...