The Wave of Things
By chance I found an old vinyl a few years ago at a flea-market. I never heard of the band before. Nonetheless, the cover was appealing to me and so I bought it. For quite some time the LP was laying around in my room, I forgot about it, until
This article is part of a series about memes in popular culture. If you don’t know yet, what memes and memetics are, you will find the answer in part 1. Over a long period in human history memes were spread orally. Only the most successful memes survived then. A first
In 1976 Richard Dawkins coined the term ‘meme’ in his book The Selfish Gene and by that caused a revolution in thinking in several fields, most notably in sociobiology and sociology. Although often criticised the term stayed and became a concept to work with. His theory of memetics has since
Going to a concert of a band you like can be one of the most amazing experiences. There are some people that can take the fun out of it, though. Voilà, here’s a brief typology of fun-decreasing concert goers. The iFan When the first tune of the band reaches the audience
The term ‘subculture’ is in sociology, anthropology and cultural studies defined as a group of people within a culture, which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong (Samovar 1998: 50). In other definitions the term ‘co-culture’ is preferred, “because it calls attention to the idea of dual
October 2012 a friend of mine told me that Jarboe, former member of trouble-making band Swans, was performing in Ljubljana’s alternative quarter Metelkova. Of course, I did not hesitate to go there, expecting a wonderful concert experience. Swans were one of my favourite music groups for years and I especially
In the second article about Steampunk I discussed the narratives of combining man and machine and the attraction of this topic within the Steampunk culture. In the following I will outline another interesting aspect of Steampunk: The re-writing, appropriation and continuation of fairy-tales.
The Steampunk culture focuses strongly on technical attributes. In a D.I.Y. manner many people, dedicated to the Steampunk aesthetic, try to create diverse gadgets as eye-candy on their outfits or even to re-build modern life tools mechanically or with steam-power. When talking about this topic, we must not forget that
2012 went by really fast. But all the good times do. I got to know a lot of nice people, intensified my journalistic work, had interviews with upstarting musicians like Victor Sierra, Calling All Astronauts, Ádám Bérces and The Melting Clock, but also with legends like Jarboe (ex-Swans) and Ronny
“Brought together by combining old and new, it is a great example of how we humans aspire to create” (Harrington 2011: 8). While steampunk is already widely known and partly acknowledged by the public in the USA, its recognition in Europe is pending. This does not imply that there are