Steamthesizer

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the world of Steampunk. Steampunk is a word with many meanings, an idea that spans many disciplines. It’s one of the sneakier cultural phenomena of our age, mostly shying from the limelight of mainstream internet culture.

According to a reputable source, Steampunk refers primarily to a genre of fantasy or science fiction that explores the ramifications of advanced technology on society or the possibilities, both technological or otherwise, of alternate worlds or “path-not-taken” narratives. But the bit that interests me comes almost as a footnote at the end: “Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual artisans into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical ‘steampunk’ style.”

My introduction to Steampunk came from a series of recurring posts on BoingBoing, a multifarious Directory of Wonderful Things. BoingBoing has tagged so many posts with the keyword “steampunk” that it would take hours to browse through it all. What initially caught my interest was this practice of re-purposing or re-imagining everyday objects through the lens of madhat technologists of the late 19th century. The two types of devices I’ve seen most often in Steampunk projects are musical instruments and computer peripherals.

Heckeshorn (Photo by Kirsten Groh)

Above you can see a picture of the Heckeshorn, the first device built by German musician Moritz Wolpert in 2008. It is comprised of an amplified string instrument that acts like an automated slide-banjo and a music-box that sounds like a kalimba, mounted on an engraved brass chassis.

The use of brass as a construction or decoration material signals the steampunk aesthetic in action. Though it is no longer used in the manufacture of modern technology, brass has an intrinsic aesthetic appeal that evokes an earthy solidity and sets it apart from a world of cheap plastics and flashy aluminum casing.

A Clockwork Guitar by Jake von Slatt

Wolpert’s machines, as well as the etched-brass pickguard on the guitar above, meet the primary criterion of Steampunk projects: detailed surface work that evokes the Victorian-era mechanist aesthetic. In the case of the guitar, however, the surface is the only plane of engagement between the maker and the object. The modification does not affect the function of the guitar or any parameter of that function–only its appearance. In fact, most Steampunk objects, especially those intended for mass consumption on alt-merchandise websites like Etsy, retain all aspects of their contemporary functionality.

Steampunk Flat-Panel LCD and Keyboard Mod by Jake von Slatt

The keyboard mod above provides a great illustration of what Steampunk should be about. Jake von Slatt replaced the familiar plastic square keys of modern keyboards with the heavy round brass keys found on early typewriters. The brass keys are unquestionably harder to use, so the mod represents a technological regression. How is it valuable, then, beyond looking cool?

Most computer users today have never used a brass typewriter other than as a novelty and probably don’t spend much time thinking about how the buttons on their Macbook came to look the way they do. So the inconvenience of a brass keyboard attached to a modern computer forces an encounter with the origins and history of a user interface we take for granted.

Steampunk makers like Moritz Wolpert and Jake von Slatt recognize what we gain from the shock of such an encounter. An awkward or inappropriate user interface calls attention to itself and defamiliarizes the user’s experience of a given object. With that defamiliarization comes a heightened awareness of how pervasively our technology dictates our daily routines and patterns of thought and perception.

This brings me to the device that inspired this article, seen in the photo below.

Schaltzentrale by Moritz Wolpert

The Schaltzentrale (“Central Switchboard”) is an analog modular synthesizer, complete with ring modulation, a step sequencer, and voltage control. It works alone or can be used to control the Heckeshorn and its various components. All of its brass surface controls were hand-built at a lathe, and the voltmeter on it dates back to 1901.

Large modular synths functionally similar to the Schaltzentrale were hot in the 1970s and earned an iconic status when they appeared on stage with groups like Pink Floyd and Emerson, Lake, & Palmer.

Keith Emerson playing a Moog modular synth (Photo by Mark Glinsky)

Since then they have been replaced by much more compact devices like the microKORG that emulate, with varying degrees of accuracy, the sounds produced by a modular synthesizer.

microKORG by KORG Corporation

In light of the fact that the microKORG makes the modular synth look like a cumbersome monstrosity, I think Wolpert’s decision to mod the synthesizer is extremely fitting: he altered an already anachronistic technology according to the aesthetics of a bygone technological era.

But the Schaltzentrale accomplishes more than just a retro make-over for the synthesizer. Through its incongruously decorative brass control surface, the Schaltzentrale calls the user’s attention both to the development of electronic music and to the history of technology manufacture in general. In this device we find a potential for intellectual engagement almost totally absent in the brass-packaged techno-trinkets I mentioned above.

Like the typewriter-keyboard mod and the Heckshorn, the Schaltzentrale is an example of Steampunk culture at its best: a celebration of technology as artwork and a salute to all that we might learn from technological backwardness. Above all, it’s a culture insisting that elegance and beauty in technology is more than a measure of how much will fit on an integrated circuit.

anachronism fashion hacking music steampunk synthesizers technology Posted under Found by Didier