steampunk – Page 14 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 12

Simulation No. 136 (1973); From the Archigram Revival Project.

• Scientific American looks at DMT: “the only psychedelic known to occur naturally in the human body”. Related: Hofmann’s Elixir: LSD and the New Eleusis, a book from the Beckley Foundation Press.

• “People weren’t quite sure what this guy was doing.” Colin Marshall talks to Eno biographer David Sheppard.

• LA FAN presents its debut group show, Eve in the Garden of Lost Angels, curated by Milla Zeltzer, at Optical Allusion Gallery, downtown Los Angeles, from May 15 to June 12, 2010.

• Masturbation: literature’s last taboo. The words “last” and “taboo” should never be used together; taboos don’t vanish, they migrate.

• Announcing the Text: Development of the Title Page, 1470–1900.

• The Anachronism is an award-wining Steampunk short about two children who discover the wreck of a giant squid submarine on a beach near their home.

• Out There is a brand new, bi-annual, international magazine for gay men and their friends.

• The Big Picture looks at the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull.

• Expo 2010 opens in Shanghai on May 1st.

• (Walter) Benjamin in Extremis.

• Nathalie returns to Bomarzo.

• Acronymic songs of the week: Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (1967) by The Beatles; The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice (1967) by The Jimi Hendrix Experience; London Social Degree (1968) by Billy Nicholls; Love’s Secret Domain (1991) by Coil.

Weekend links 10

One of a number of vintage ads and ephemeral items at this Flickr set.

• From 1971: The Anthony Balch/William Burroughs/Jan Herman video experiment.

• The NYT reports on World on a Wire, a neglected science fiction drama by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

• “While some of the technology industry’s brightest minds were inventing the first PCs and developing groundbreaking software, they were also feeding their heads with LSD.”

• The archive of author and illustrator Mervyn Peake has been acquired by the British Library for £410,000.

• Thames & Hudson are publishing I Wonder, a book by the wonderful Marian Bantjes, later in the year. Her site has a preview. I want.

• The gays: It’s election season in the UK so My Gay Vote looks at how the three main parties have supported LGB issues. (No data for the graphs, however.) Is theatre finally glad to be gay? Yet more Tumblrs: I heart skinny boys & Cute boys with cats.

• Trend-spotter, “svengali”, Situationist and the man who named the Sex Pistols: RIP Malcolm McLaren. The Guardian ran a number of memorial pages. Related: Anarchy in Gardenstown.

• Dublin’s One City, One Book choice for April 2010 is The Picture of Dorian Gray.

• The Catastrophist: Christopher Hitchens on JG Ballard.

• Steampunk Taxidermy by Lisa Black.

• LIFE looks back at Aleister Crowley.

• Groovy songs of the week: Julie Driscoll (with Brian Auger & The Trinity), a pair of songs by Bob Dylan—This Wheel’s On Fire—and Donovan—Season Of The Witch—and sets which look like a collaboration between Verner Panton and Marcel Duchamp. Amazing.

Vickers Airship Catalogue

Just the thing for when you need to build your own… From a page of plans at Forgotten Futures. The photo of the Vickers Parseval craft is from this early aviation archive.

Meanwhile, my good friend Ed alerted me to a documentary film which will be released in March this year. Farewell is directed by Ditteke Mensink and uses archive footage to tell the story of Lady Grace Drummond-Hay, the only female passenger on the first journey around the world of the Graf Zeppelin in 1929.

The voyage took 21 days and started off in New York. Via Friedrichshafen in Germany, across Siberia to Tokyo, across the Pacific Ocean to Los Angeles, the airship finally arrived back in New York greeted by much cheering and a ticker tape parade. During the adventurous trip the printing presses were working overtime, as it was followed closely and covered extensively. The voyage was a symbol of both technological progress and the improved relationship between two great nations: the United States and Germany. The outside world is unaware of the passionate love affair between Grace, a young widow, and Karl, a married man.

More at the film’s page here which includes a trailer. Looks fascinating, I’d love to see it.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Air Ship
• Dirigibles
• La route d’Armilia by Schuiten & Peeters
• The Airship Destroyer
• Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls

The Air Ship

More dirigibles. Posters from the Library of Congress Performing Arts Poster Collection for The Air Ship (1898), a musical comedy by JM Gaites.

I’ve had some longer posts planned but I’m chasing a deadline this week, hence the resort to brief picture posts.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dirigibles
• La route d’Armilia by Schuiten & Peeters
• The Airship Destroyer
• Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls

Dirigibles

This week’s picture research involves airships for some Steampunk-related illustration work. Lots of great Zeppelin photos abound, of course, and I’ve always liked seeing the more notable peacetime moments such as this flight of the US Los Angeles over Manhattan in 1930. Wikimedia Commons has another very striking picture of the same craft moored to a ship off Panama. The picture below, looking like something from one of the Indiana Jones films, shows the Graf Zeppelin drifting over the Pyramids in 1931. As always, the results of this Zeppelinology will be presented here in due course.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• La route d’Armilia by Schuiten & Peeters
• The Airship Destroyer
• Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls