More Faux-Nostalgia

It is very fit­ting that I saw an arti­cle on Boing Boing about a new issue of Steam­punk Mag­a­zine being released after my last post on the work of Bruce McCall. Noth­ing says Faux-Nostalgia like Steam Punk; that is the achingly sen­ti­men­tal yearn­ing for a future that never hap­pened. In case you don’t know Steam­punk is a genre where mod­ern inven­tions like com­put­ers and the infor­ma­tion age hap­pened in the age of Steam, dur­ing the height of the Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion. Check it out, it’s a really great magazine.

Lon­don Rooftops, by Raphael-Lacoste

This is a genre that I have liked, mainly because Vic­to­rian Lon­don is such a rich place for the mod­ern imag­i­na­tion to play. From Marry Pop­pins to From Hell the place is a fas­ci­nat­ing place. Coal dark­ened skies cast long shad­ows on cob­ble stone streets lit by flick­er­ing gaslight. Every twist in the street could lead to a knife wield­ing bar­ber or into the com­fort­ing embrace of  the Dawes, Tomes, Mousely, Grubbs, Fidelity Fidu­ciary Bank, only Tup­pence required as entry.

In my imag­i­na­tion Vic­to­rian Lon­don is a place of squalor on one side and great wealth and absurd tra­di­tion on the other. A place on the cusp of moder­nity, where aris­to­crats and plu­to­crats ruled over squalid slums. Not in exces­sive greed, more with exces­sive pomp and a cer­ti­tude of their own right­eous­ness. A time that seemed the sun would never set on the British Empire, then the trenches, artillery and machine guns of Ver­dun wiped that world away in one fell swoop. It was a tragic period in many ways, as the immor­tal works of Dick­ens and Shaw remind us, the dis­tance between us and then is long enough for a bit of roman­ti­cism to flour­ish. And you can read more of that in Steampunk.

• Steam Punk Mag­a­zine Link
• More infor­ma­tion on Steam­punk Link

Nostalgia for a Future that Never Happened: The Work of Bruce McCall

Bruce McCall says in this hilar­i­ous and very inter­est­ing TED pre­sen­ta­tion that Nos­tal­gia is the most utterly use­less human emo­tion. I don’t totally agree but I see the point. Nos­tal­gia if taken to extreme becomes a mild case of depres­sion and self-deception. The past is never as great or as bad as it seems and nor will the future be as won­der­ful or as ter­ri­ble as we can imag­ine. Set­ting that aside, please check out this amaz­ing lec­ture, McCall is a very witty and gifted artist.

I am fas­ci­nated by McCall’s style of art, it touches on many of my pas­sions, sci­ence fic­tion, mid-century design and art that doesn’t take itself too seri­ously. It’s a mix­ture of the low-brow art move­ment with a dash of Nor­man Rock­wel­lesque technique.

Here are the descrip­tions of his made-up but won­der­ful terms, these are things that design­ers and sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers can and should use when it is appro­pri­ate to their work:

• 

  Tomor­row­land Retro-Futurism: from Wikipedia

  Retro-futurism: Look­ing back to see how yes­ter­day saw tomor­row… and they are always hilar­i­ously wrong. Peeked in the 1930’s. Auto­mo­tive retro-futurism is a big com­po­nent of his work, the way the past saw cars look­ing in the future… fins galore!

• Techno-Archaeology: Dig­ging back and find­ing past mir­a­cles that never hap­pened, usu­ally for good rea­son, that is they wouldn’t have worked or been a dis­as­ter… fly­ing cars.
• Faux-Nostalgia: Achingly sen­ti­men­tal yearn­ing for a time that never happened.
• Hyper­bolic Overkill: A way of tak­ing exag­ger­a­tion to the absolute ulti­mate limit just for the fun of it.
• Shame­lessly Cheap: A joke that has no mean­ing but is strangely funny in and of itself.
• Urban-Absurdism: Mak­ing life in New York (and city life in gen­eral) even weirder than it is.

The most impor­tant thing that McCall said about this style of art (and lit­er­a­ture I assume) is that authen­tic­ity adds immea­sur­ably to seri­ous non­sense. That is the world pre­sented in Faux-Nostalgia has to look and feel real. The machin­ery, char­ac­ters, gen­eral look and world have to breathe. In this vein Alan Moore and the many artists he works with do this bet­ter than any one else, to see what I mean check out The League of Extra­or­di­nary Gen­tle­men (though please skip the film). Other things that fall in to this same gen­eral category:

• 

  The world of Bruce McCall

  Check out McCall’s great work, All Meat Looks Like South Amer­ica Link

• The “new” Tom­morow­land at the Dis­ney theme parks. Link
• The once defunct and highly under appre­ci­ated RPG from Game Designer’s Work­shop: Space: 1889 Link
• Bruce McCall’s Web­site Link