POSTDIGITALISM“Steampunk” and “E-coco” in twenty-first century design

Kasimir Malevich, Black Square, 1914-15

Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, Poissy-sur-Seine, France, 1929-31

A machine for living?

Marcel Breuer, Wassily-Chair, Bauhaus, 1926

Miesian minimalism

Less is more?

“Magiler” series storage unitsIkeaUSA, 2005

Modern European Functionalism

…a noble

simplicity and

calm grandeur.

Heroic and affirmative: 21st century American corporate style?

Ulysse Nardin Chairman

Mechanical Smartphone

The Hybrid?

Retronics

Craftsmanship, materiality, splendour

Datamancer, 2007

The furnished man

US

USB Stick?

Modding or physical hacking?

10,000 year clock

“slow design”

Longevitywith occasional maintenance, the clock should reasonably be expected to display the correct time for the next 10,000 years.

MaintainabilityThe clock should be maintainable with bronze-age technology.

Transparency It should be possible to determine operational principles of the clock by close inspection.

EvolvabilityIt should be possible to improve the clock with time.

ScalabilityIt should be possible to build working models of the clock from table-top to monumental size using the same design.

Long Now Foundation: A “slow design” Manifesto

In 2009 artist Tim Wetherell

created a large wall piece for

Questacon, The National

Science and Technology

centre in Canberra

Rococo cartel clockattributed to Jacques CaffieriFrancec.1750

“What do the pendulum clocks, so much in fashion, resemble; which have neither basis not console, but seem to spring out of the wainscot . . . those stags, dogs, huntsmen, or Chinese figures, which they dispose in so odd a manner about the dial-plate; are they its natural ornament?”

Abbé le BlancLetter to Comte de Caylus1737-44

Mantel clockAttributed to Jean-Pierre LatzFrenchc. 1730’s

Mantle clock Maker unknownFrenchc. 1745-1750

Casket (coffres de toilette)Maker unknownFrance1755-1760

Cinderella Table Jeroen VerhoevenThe Netherlands,2004

Heatwave radiatorJoris Laarman, The Netherlands2003

Altermodernism

Modernist E-coco/Steampunk

• Curvalinear, organic

• Exuberant and emotional

• Amoral and irrational

• Synthetic and inclusive

• Artisanal

• heterogenous

• Rectilinear, geometric

• Restrained and rational

• Moral and rational

• Reductive and exclusive

• Academic

• homogenous

Victorian science fiction

Rococo Revivalism

Jules Verne, Captain Nemo and Nautilus

Dr. Grordborts Infallible Aether Oscillators

analytical engineCharles Babbage, 1837

Analog computer?

The Telectroscope

Telectroscope 2006, Paul St. George

• Bottom-up design

• repurposed

• DIY

• Aura/authenticity

• Protoindustrial

• Nostalgic

• Postmodern?

• Postdigital

• Critical?

Elements of

Steampunk

Why?

• Dissolution with homogeneity of mass market goods (iphone)

• Reemphasis on the physical world

• Pre-digital and pre-electrical nostalgia

• Reconnection with embedded cultural meaning

• Reconstitution of “aura”

• Antidote to digital-age attention deficits