Steampunk World's Fair 2012

Third annual Steampunk World’s Fair to host world-class entertainment, draw thousands to New Jersey

This May, thousands of Steampunks from around the globe will tune up their dirigibles, set their airships a’sail, and invent new transportation gadgets to descend on (of all places) New Jersey for the 3^rd annual Steampunk World’s Fair.  This year the festival will be bigger than ever, drawing more attendees and hosting more guests and performers than any other Steampunk event in the world.

The event’s main contributor is visionary and Steampunk World’s Fair creator, Jeff Mach.  Mach has many years of experience as the chief organizer for over 100 events on the East Coast.  As Steampunk World’s Fair approaches its third year, Mach is well aware of the challenges he and his crew face.  “With the profusion of Steampunk events springing up throughout the world, we had to raise the bar for this year,” says Mach.  “So we now occupy, not just two hotels, but much of the outdoor area in between.  This has given us the capability to add new, interactive events unseen anywhere else.”

One such event will be the Midway and Carnival Obscura, a raucous, outdoor festival showcasing family friendly acts by day and transforming into a dark carnivale by night.  Fire performers, circus acts, sideshow spectacles, and many more entertainers will perform for revelers to feast their eyes on.  This event is one of several components that will make 2012 Steampunk World’s Fair’s greatest year yet.

Steampunk World’s Fair will run May 18-20 in Piscataway, NJ.  Tickets and VIP passes are on sale now; get yours before they sell out!

About Steampunk

Steampunk is a subculture whose members celebrate the beauty of yesterday alongside the technology of tomorrow.  Fanciful Victorian aesthetics blend seamlessly with ray guns and time machines to create a world where anything is possible.  There are no rules, just your imagination, and all are welcome on this great adventure.

Psyche Corporation

About Steampunk World’s Fair

Steampunk World’s Fair, currently in its third year, is the largest Steampunk event in the world hosting thousands of attendees, guests, and performers annually.  This year will include new, fully immersive and interactive events to stir the imagination.  The festival will run May 18-20 in Piscataway, NJ.  Tickets and VIP passes are on sale now.  Get yours before they sell out!

Victor Sierra at Steampunk World's Fair!

Via Bob Eisenstein

Victor Sierra at Steampunk World's Fair!
New single to be released next week!
Take your perk here:

http://www.indiegogo.com/victorsierra4spwf

http://steampunkworldsfair.com/

Frenchy and The Punk Dark Carnivale

Frenchy and the Punk appear at a great many Steampunk Conventions and events throughout the world.  Their Gypsy style music blends with many other styles of world music to make a wonderful blend that is unique and lively!  They also are good enough story tellers with their songs to be a favorite among Steampunks.  This is one of my favorites of their various songs and videos:

Dark Canivale

Also check out their Offical Website:  Gypsy Nomads

Official Bio from their website is as follows:

Biography:

Euro-American duo Frenchy and the Punk (formerly The Gypsy Nomads) fuse raucous live guitar looping, cheeky ballads sung in English and French, danceable old-world inspired melodies and thunderous tribal-march-style drum instrumentals. Get transported to a world full of humor, theatricality, whirling dance and bohemian spirit. Come experience their genre-busting non-traditional take on world cabaret served with a twist of vaudeville and a dash of steampunk flavoring rooted in folk, punk and the vineyards of southern France. 

French-born Brit. lead vocalist and percussionist, Samantha Stephenson and American-born punk veteran guitarist Scott Helland make up this spirited duo. Stephenson, whose vocals have been likened Siouxsie Sioux, was listed in Yahoo Music's 25 Women to Watch in 2011. Helland has appeared on over 25 recordings and his first group Deep Wound with J Mascis and Lou Barlow is listed in the Encylopedia of Punk published by Sterling.

Touring incessantly coast to coast since 2005 and racking up over 150 shows a year and four full-length albums and a live DVD, they bring their pulse-poundin' tribute to the free spirit lifestyle to alternative music festivals and conventions across the U.S. and Europe. Frenchy and the Punk's touring highlights include performances at The Avalon Ball, Glastonbury UK, FaerieWorlds, Eugene, OR, SteamCon, Seattle, WA, and DragonCon, Atlanta, GA as well as sharing the stage with such diverse acts as Dinosaur Jr, The Young Dubliners, Voltaire and German Neo-Medieval band Faun. Their music has been played on the Travel Channel, We TV, the Cartoon Network, the Oprah Winfrey Show and MTV. 

The Nightmare Machine Steampunk and Paranormal Event

            The Nightmare Machine, organized by the Steampunk Illumination Society, was the most unusual Steampunk Event I have attended and made for a truly immersive experience.  Instead of pretend Victorian scenery, the entire city was pretty much still Victorian Era in style and design.  The general store was Wild West and/or Diesel Era for real!  The last wood burning steamboat in the world (that I know of anyway) still operating, gave rides as part of your admission price.  A perfect replica Steam Train gave an extensive tour around the town.  The horse drawn carriages toured the interior of the town.  There were Ghost tours (also included in admission price) cypress groves, old west era city streets, and even brass convention badges beautifully engraved with the Steampunk Illumination Society Image.  (at no small cost I’m sure!)  There was even (get this!) a free “Museum of Time and Measurement” that featured all sorts of clock sand time pieces, early calculating devices, and land measurement devices of all types available for view. 

 The “Museum of Time and Measurement” also provided one of the three main panel locations for the event. The second panel location was at the Russel Building, a very old style brick building (painted bright pink) attached to one of the oldest and most haunted buildings in the city.  The final location for panels as well as the main performance room for shows was at the tourism center right next to the Replica Steam Train station and across the street from the outdoor vendor’s area.  While these three main centers of activity were each about 3 or 4 blocks apart from each other, it was spring and the town was pleasing to the eye, so complaints about walking time or distance were not that frequent and free parking was pretty easy to find in any case.

            I find that my complete listing of events has vanished somewhere and the schedule is no longer on the web site. (Maybe one of the ghosts ran off with it?)  As such I will simply discuss the panels or performances I personally saw or heard about at the event.  The Dieselpunk Panel, presented by local experts Larry and Tina Amyett was great as always.  It introduced the attendees to the concept, look, and focus of Diesel Punk as a unique genre and it’s role in the larger Steampunk Community. 

 

            “Dark Steampunk” was presented as well, which apparently introduces a very mysterious, gothic, and somewhat sinister look to Steampunk in mostly black cloth or leather with nickel and some crimson. (as opposed to the typical brown leather and brass) The outfits are very focused on producing an imposing, intimidating, and somewhat sinister look.  This often includes masks, some of which appear to represent Raven’s beaks, in a way that plays upon the human subconscious deliciously well!  This approach has played a very big role in recent LARP events where the “Dark Steampunks” portray the “bad guys” (if such actually exist) or at least the opposition force to provide a respectable adversary for ASI and SCARS. 

            This event also hosted a number of unusual paranormal panels such as “Real Ghosts“, and the “Real Vampyres“ panels presented by Kali’s Hourglass.   Real Ghosts presented general theories about what ghosts really are and the various types of manifestations that might not actually be ghosts, but are indeed a haunting.  They also shared personal experiences living in various haunted homes and how they were able to live in harmony with and eventually help release ghosts from the trap of their existence.  The “Real Vampyres” panel touched lightly on historical facts, myths, and legends, in order to give context and vocabulary as well as symbolic contexts.  It then focused on the modern phenomenon of actual Vampyre Cultures which are not fictional, but actually exist as a fully developed human subculture today.  It also discussed the variety and general differences between psychic vampires, online vampires, Blood Fetishists, Ethical Vampyres, and other types within said subculture. 

            Musical performances were many and excellent from Darwin Prophet and the Chronus Mirror, Marquis of Vaudville, BB Blackdog, and My Wooden Leg.  Darwin Prophet not only showed up after a fall that left one arm and one leg in a cast, but still managed to perform, (with guitar no less!), at every scheduled performance.  She first played acoustic outside the Hotel where her beloved Oscar Wilde once stayed and wrote beautiful poetry in a tribute to his great contributions to the arts. 

 Marquis of Vaudville actually led off the main concert this time, and as always, provided an excellent performance that got all the dancers up on their feet unable to sit still with exuberance during their show.  Darwin Prophet and the Chronus Mirror was next.  They had an excellent set with full heavy instrumentation which had the audience up and dancing throughout.  My Wooden Leg was next with a somewhat quirky, but very entertaining set. 

BB Blackdog was the final act.  Their bluesy old rock style with deep throated bass was truly something different that pulled emotions and joy, at least among us old style rock and rollers, in a powerful way.  They played quite a variety of styles within their general genre asking the audience to choose if the next be more hard rock, blues, funk, or something else.  As the audience included young children, the more controversial numbers were not performed, but the ones that were presented were incredibly well received, and the dancers among the crowd found a second wind when these soulful musicians took the stage!

The towns people were uncertain what to expect from a bunch of “Steampunks”, but said over and over how surprised and pleased they were at how polite, clean, and well behaved our attendees were.  Apparently many conventions or events leave a lot of litter in the streets, drunken arrests, and other problems that they did not encounter with any of our people.  They were also surprised how much income our event generated for the town in light of the rather small turn out that new events can attract.  As such, the town is pushing hard to get us back next year, but while the location is a good place to offer more events for Steampunks in Louisiana and Arkansas, it was so far away from hotbeds of Steampunk activity like Austin, Houston, and San Antonio, that it may not be practical to have it in the same location next year.  We will just have to wait and see. 

Psyche Corporation at the Macabre Faire

Psyche Corporation to perform at the Macabre Faire this coming April 13-15 at the Best Western in Rockville Centre, NY. Other performers include those you see on their poster above.  Please visit: www.TwitchTwitchProductions.com for detailed schedules and tickets.

Steampunk Europa LARP

Steampunk Papers! (via http://doctorfantastiques.com)

Nightmare Machine Review Coming Soon

Sorry it is taking me so long to get a review of the Nightmare Machine Steampunk and Paranormal Convention up, but almost everyone here at Kali's Hourglass has a terrible case of the crud (no it's not that deadly plague consumption, but it's pretty bad!) complete with coughing, sneezing, snorting etc.  Fortunately our air krakens are pretty much immune, but others here range from using both medicine and magick to try to recover including one crew member on a nebulizer for pneumonia.  We are recovering however.  I am happy to report that some types of magick, seem to have a very beneficial effect on upper respiratory illnesses.