what is retro futurism

what is

Retro futurism

what is

Retro futurism

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Retro

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Retrofuturism can be seen as “an animating perspective on the world.�

The first trend, retrofuturism proper, is directly inspired by the imagined future which existed in the minds of writers, artists, and filmmakers in the pre - 1960 period who attempted to predict the future, either in serious projections of existing technology (e.g. in magazines like Science and Invention) or in science fiction novels and stories.

Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a “literature of ideas�.

Such futuristic visions are refurbished and updated for the present, and offer a nostalgic, counterfactual image of what the future might have been, but is not.

The second trend is the inverse of the first: futuristic retro. It starts with the retro appeal of old styles of art, clothing, mores, and then grafts modern or futuristic technologies onto it, creating a mĂŠlange of past, present, and future elements.

Steampunk, a term applying both to the retrojection of futuristic technology into an alternative Victorian age, and the application of neo-Victorian styles to modern technology , is a exteremley successful version of this second trend. In the movie Space Station 76 (2014) , mankind has reached the stars but clothes, technology, furnitures and above all social taboos are highly reminiscent of the mid 1970s.

In practice, the two trends cannot be sharply distinguished, as they mutually contribute to similar visions.

Retrofuturism of the first type is inevitably influenced by the scientific, technological, and social awareness of the present, and modern retrofuturistic creations are never simply copies of their pre - 1960 inspirations; rather, they are given a new (often wry or ironic) twist by being seen from a modern perspective.

In the same way, futuristic retro owes much of its flavor to early science fiction (e.g. the works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells), and in a quest for stylistic authenticity may continue to draw on writers and artists of the desired period.

Both retrofuturistic trends in themselves refer to no specific time.

When a time period is supplied for a story, it might be a counterfactual present with unique technology; a fantastic version of the future; or an alternate past in which the imagined (fictitious or projected) inventions of the past were indeed real.

Examples include the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, set in an imaginary 1939, and The Rocketeer franchise, set in 1938, both of which are also examples of the genre known as dieselpunk.

Adam Reed’s animated comedy series Archer is also set in a retrofuture aesthetic world. The import of retrofuturism has, in recent years, come under considerable discussion.

Some, like the German architecture critic Niklas Maak, see retrofuturism as “nothing more than an aesthetic feedback loop recalling a lost belief in progress, the old images of the once radically new.” Bruce McCall calls retrofuturism a “faux nostalgia” – the nostalgia for a future that never happened.

Genre of

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The first of these to be named and recognized as its own genre was cyberpunk, originating in the early to mid-1980s in literature with the works of Bruce Bethke, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Pat Cadigan.

It tends to focus on a “combination of lowlife and high tech� featuring advanced technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics, juxtaposed with a degree of breakdown or radical

Much of cyberpunk is rooted in the New Wave science fiction movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The post apocalyptic variant is the one usually associated with retrofuturism, where characters will rely upon a mixture of old and new technologies.

Furthermore, synthwave and vapor-wave are nostalgic, humorous and often retrofuturistic revivals of this early genres aesthetic. It also has a setting that tends.

Pun The second to be named and recognized was steampunk, in the late 1980s. It is generally more optimistic and brighter than cyberpunk, set within an alternate history closely resembling our long 19th century from circa the Regency era onwards and up to circa 1914, only that 20th-century or even futuristic technologies are based upon steam power.

The genre themes also often involve references to power as a yet as ofnow mysterious force that is considered the utopian power source of the future and sometimes even regarded as possessing mystical healing powers. The genre often strongly resembles the original scientific romances and utopic novels of genre predecessors.

nk H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, and began in its modern form with literature such as Mervyn Peake’s Titus Alone, Ronald W. Clark’s Queen Victoria’s Bomb, Michael Moorcock’s A Nomad of the Time Streams series, K. W. Jeter’s Morlock Night, and William Gibson & Bruce Sterling’s The Difference Engine, and with films such as The Time Machine or Castle in the Sky.

A notable early example of steampunk in comics is the Franco-Belgian graphic novel series Les Cités obscures, started by its creators François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters in the early 1980s. At times, steampunk as a genre crosses into that of weird west. Steampunk incorporates elements of fantasy, horror, fiction and alternate history.

dieselpun decaden The term dieselpunk is often associated with a more pulpish form and decodence, named after the contemporary art movement of Art Deco, with a more worldly form, set in alternate versions of an era located circa in the period of the 1920s-1950s.

Early examples include the 1970s concept albums, their designs and marketing materials of the German band Kraftwerk, the comic-book character Rocketeer (first appearing in his own series in 1982), the Fallout series of video games, and films such as Brazil (1985), Batman (1989), The Rocketeer (1991), Batman Returns (1992), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), The City of Lost Children (1995), and Dark City (1998).

Especially the lower-end of the genre strongly mimic the pulp literature of the era (such as the 2004 film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), and films of the genre often reference the cinematic styles of film noir and German Expressionism. At times, the genre overlaps with the alternate history genre of a different World War II, such as with an Axis victory.

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