The bizarre world of steampunk

I stumbled upon the Steampunk Headquarters and was blown away by the experience, not least because it is in a quiet seaside town on the South Island of New Zealand known for…its penguins!

Is it art? Who knows? I found it fun, disturbing, engaging, alarming and intriguing. The HQ piles strangeness upon strangeness—every corner is filled with distorted metal animals, bits of old machinery and eclectic collections of recycled industrial art that is rusted and twisted into something else. 

Apparently Steampunk is a “quirky and fun genre of science fiction that features steam-powered technology”. It is a futuristic version of 19th century Victorian England “gone mad”. Its significant influences were H.G. Wells and his time machine, Jules Verne and “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea” and Alan Moore's super heroes in “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”.

Futuristic technologies are taken back into the “ornate and opulent world of grand fashion and gentlemanly manners”, a future with a dark side of grime and decay. It’s like one of those crazy Victorian science experiments (think Frankenstein gone wrong).

The “punk” in steampunk represents a rebellion against the present day preference for plastic and the disposable way of life. One of the highlights was the “metagalactic” pipe organ. It is described as a “device for capturing sounds and signals picked up by the HQ time travel Officers when visiting alien worlds. Its sounds were “captured during space-time jumps to earth” and its special combinations of notes opens up time portals to exotic “alien holiday destinations”. Well, there’s no answer to that! Nothing at the Steampunk is as it seems. There is little here that you just look at, most of the time you are compelled to engage with it, move something, push a button or, at times, just wonder what it is! A Doomsday Clock was ticking away, somehow quite chilling. Strange electronic faces leered out of the darkness.

Anything can be influenced by Steampunk: literature, art, music, film, fashion, technology, invention, jewellery and sculpture.

My favourite experience was “The Portal”—a stunning “retro-futuristic” installation of what seemed like hundreds of thousands of glowing light skulls sculptures. Each light was in fact a reflection of other lights, which in turn mirrored other lights. It felt like hanging silently in outer space, surrounded by galaxies of shining stars.

(Later in the afternoon I went to a “regular” art gallery—in comparison I found it quiet, sterile and a bit sad after this experience!)

For times and prices etc go to: Steampunk HQ