I recently had the opportunity to visit briefly Ottawa city, Canada's capitol. I was struck by the congruity of gothic and modern architecture. Ottawa boasts several different architectural types, including Gothic, French revival, Art Deco, American Colonial and Modern.
Shooting this photo into the sun, I saw a Steampunk landscape. Steampunk is fanciful, it combines the gothic ethos of pointed, cathedral-like stone architecture with the dawn of industrialism, coincidentally a period when global exploration would be exploited by mass media. You take this confluence and bring the technology to modern standards without changing the aesthetic, and you get steampunk. It's gritty and intimidating, but also exciting as well, the idea that Nature can be tamed through superior technology.
Steampunk is a companionable opposite to Art Nouveau (see JSVB Posts #1404 and #1408) where unruly Nature breaks through the confines of the man-made world. I've been looking around: I've been seeing some really great new Art Nouveau style pieces, call it Nouveau Art Nouveau. We're reaching the same point in our culture that was perceived by the artists of the original Art Nouveau period: our technology has become powerful enough once again to sublimate our society and it remains to be seen how Nature will react and adapt. Historically, that process has been most painful.
Posts
