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Steampunk and cocopunk, two parallel recasting subgenres, are part of the same big idea: that makeover is where design happens these days. Steampunks dress new technology up in Victorian garb; cocopunks prefer grass skirts. A steampunk laptop might look like this, with brass rivets and big, toothy gears. A cocopunk one looks like this, covered in bamboo.
Steampunk and cocopunk seems like opposites of the school Harry Allen belongs to–he makes old things look new; these guys make new things look old–but it's not. Both ways look backwards for inspiration, and to recasting for execution. They give new skins to preexisting ideas.
Sam Baron of Fabrica took this concept literally when he came up with rolls of patterned tape meant to spruce up old, unwanted furniture. "The idea is to create a covering system that creates a second skin, and a second life to some old furniture that can be found in a second-hand market or in the street," says Baron. "It's design through re-design, basically."
Therein lies the problem. Re-design doesn't cut it. Under all that polished brass and bamboo, the laptop hasn't changed. It's just been renamed. Duchamp's shovel is still a shovel. John Gordon says that as a curator, he's "looking for craftsmanship and intellectual engagement. This might be an object that appeals to me on a Christmas-gift level, but museologically I look for something more. It's hard to do good things that are witty because a one-liner isn't funny after a while." And yes, his job drives that statement, but we'd do well to think of our own homes as museums sometimes, places where design objects sit on rafts of meaning, and "stuff" doesn't belong. "Design has to be lasting," Gordon says.
The trickiest part of the recasting trend, though, is that in a way, repurposing an old design is a great way to make it last. The problem is, it's the old design that should get into the museum, not your one-liner about it. (...)
