Today I give you Lucas de Alacantara, a delightfully imaginative artist (not much info about him that I could find).
His work also contains a number of elaborate steampunk contraptions…
Tag: steampunk
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Although I adore most dark and unsettling things, I’m not a fan of theatrical haunted houses.
I tend to be put off by the live actors invading my space and relying on the cheap thrills of activating the most base human reflexes. It’s distracting and irritating. All I really want to do is enjoy the scenery, props and artistry of the whole thing. Really, get out of my face and don’t jump out at me…it just ruins the experience.
Here’s a novel idea for a haunted house that does use some of the aforementioned scare tactics, but has a different spin:
In this truly immersive experience, audience members are thrust into a beautiful and terrifying dreamscape of neo-Victorian elegance and phantasmagoric clockwork horrors. Once inside, audience members are separated, until one by one, they find themselves alone, lost somewhere within the three sprawling floors of Abrons’ majestic century-old playhouse. From there, they must choose where to go, exploring innumerable twisting hallways, looming balconies, and labyrinthine cellars. All the while, a whirlwind of mechanical apparitions, wraithlike sleepwalkers, and gear-powered beasts hurtle through corridors and lurk behind every corner and within every room.
Trailer:
Honestly, what I’d like to see more than anything else is a collection of still frames. I’m sure it’s a feast for the senses in there.
If anyone in NY goes, please tell me about your experience!
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I have never wanted to hop a plane to Wisconsin so badly in my life. I absolutely must visit the House on the Rock.
I’m going to be honest. I can’t write detailed descriptions of all the rooms in this place, because I WILL impulsively buy a plane ticket I can’t afford…and we don’t want that, now do we?
However, I will direct you to this fantastic post that describes the house in more detail.
Antiques, oddities, puppets, monsters, instruments, specimens, props, masks, machines, weapons, books, carnival and sideshow relics…enough to make one’s head explode in the most delightful way.
A wise friend recently pointed out a common thread in my preferences: a penchant for intensely created little worlds full of unique vision. I think this place is a perfect example. I like to be sensually overwhelmed, immersed in creativity, history, the carefully crafted extremes of madness and entertainment. Places that collect the bizarre fringes of human invention never fail to fascinate me.
Each bit of ephemera tells a story…stories run through my head with every picture I see…
Time to count the change in my jar and save up for that ticket…
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I’m currently swooning over Datamancer’s Alchemist Keyboard.
The side lighting is wired into the scroll lock LED and turns on with a press of the scroll lock key. It is a USB keyboard, but because the lighting is hooked into the scroll lock function, this keyboard is designed for a PC, not a Mac. The function keys display the elemental symbols of the various metals used in the construction of the keyboard, as well as a few others. The tilde and number keys display the symbols for the sun, moon and the planets. The symbols for Earth, Air, Fire and Water are found on the arrow keys and the number pad uses stylized Roman numerals. The Enter and Shift keys are labeled with the symbols for Alchemical processes like mixing, stirring, combining, etc.
Datamancer is simply brilliant.
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Tokyo DisneySea has opened up an attraction based on Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. The scenery is outstanding!
Riders travel through mysterious caverns to the Earth’s core as scientists aboard vehicles designed by Captain Nemo. After traveling through Nemo’s labs inside Mt. Prometheus, guests board “Terravators” to the facility’s base station one half mile below. In the base station is a communications center which is currently giving warnings of increased volcanic activity, but the scientist who mans it is currently away on a tea break. The riders then board steam-powered mine vehicles that travel through pre-drilled tunnels into the heart of the Earth.
I must say, I do love most things “steampunk” despite not being an intricately costumed member of the subculture.
I believe the plaque on the bottom of of this sign indicates a Coca Cola sponsorship (I remember seeing pictures of it in English)…kind of ruins the romance of the statement, so I’m glad it’s in Japanese here. I wouldn’t mind hanging this sign in my library.
See more pictures on Voyages Extraordinaires.
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This Robotic Teapot on Etsy inspired me to do an image search for steampunk teapots:
There were surprisingly few of them. I thought it would be a more popular choice for mod projects in the steampunk community. But here are some favorites:
For some reason, my remaining source links seem to have vanished. I wonder if I erased them by accident…
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Given the rising popularity of all things steampunk, I’m pretty sure Alessandro Maffioletti’s vintage imagery collages are going to go viral on the Web.
They really are quite lovely surreal constructions.
Get your fill of gears, instruments, creatures and technology of days gone by, spliced together in odd harmony here.
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I’m rather jealous of Japan’s giant robot proliferation. I just posted about the Fire Spitting Robot Baby, and now Yokohama has been graced with giant robot spiders!
These beauties, bound to thrill the steampunk culture, are the work of theatrical machine makers La Machine, created for the Y150 Expo later this month.
Here is a video of the sculpture in action:
I wonder if La Machine took inspiration from Louise Bourgeois’s incredible spider sculpture:
SheWalksSoftly 