Mondo Spider

Mondo Spider
Originally uploaded by Niveau.

Things like this make one wonder about the drive of 'steam punk,' that so-called genre of kitsch technology and counter-culture attitude. Steam punk seems to tap that part of our psyche where the vast reservoir of nostalgia is ensconced. Large mechanical objects that move like this leave one wondering about... efficiency.

The most striking thing about steam punk and watching the video footage of this walker (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40debSRrAOw) is the way it bespeaks the necessarily modern basis for steam punk. It is like an alternate future imagined through machines of mechanical hazardousness and thoughts of instrumentality keeps our voice stuck in the mode of a flaneur: silent.