I just have to mention this excitement. I can’t say I know for sure how to tie it in. It is a film exhibit in NY that proposes that Romanticism has always been with us.
This meme touches me. Romanticism to me is the Age of Enlightenment’s follow up. It is the first time modern civilization began. The Age of Reason is when men (in the gender neutral use) learned to reason for themselves without being encumbered by tradition and therefore also began thinking about their past critically, becoming then “modern”. Similarly the Romantic period is when men “felt” modernly.
This look back from the mind’s eye, or the gut, is what got me interested in this project. Anachronism and retrospective fashion have always been around but today there is a retrospective need that steampunk fills. That’s how Watching Machines ties in.
I think society is changing and I mean in a big fundamental way, in terms of eras. I may be wrong but we share so much information now, an incredible amount of information. It seems inevitable that we would grow up in strange ways, and learn to feel in strange ways too.
Those are big words, I know. Link.
slo-tech 
2 Comments
I like your suggestion of a link between romanticism and steampunk…there may be more to that than meets the eye. There may be, as you suggest, more to a lot of things than meets the eye…
It’s just a hunch. Even if it is true it’s not to say it in a way that abides by a cyclic idea of human progress, or even a linear one. Instead maybe a perspective of stacking or layering of modern ideas? Maybe now that our social range is so much larger due to the internet, it isn’t as difficult to uncover validating incidents of our particular strata of social behavior, with Romanticism being just one of those.
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