The obsession with vintage items during recent years has escalated even further into a trend for Steampunk items, ranging from clothes to household items.

Steampunk is a juxtaposition of science fiction technology, and the Victorian era of the 19^th Century when steam power was still used.

It still retains the concept of owning a one-off item, like vintage and antiques, but presents this with a twist of modern technology.

There is a current influx of these items, so we have picked out the top 3 must-have gadgets with a Steampunk theme…

Steampunk Mechanical Rotary Smartphone

This particular gadget probably sums up the Steampunk concept more than any other, combining the most up to date technology with processes from the past. The user of this phone can feel the intricacies of both modern and traditional design with dual-operating methods. It has a phone dial at the back as well as a numeric keyboard on the phone – showing a direct comparison between the emerging dominance of touch screen technology and traditional methods.

Colorfly Media Player

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The Irish-born milliner, known for his outlandish creations, reveals his inspirations to the public at an exhibition opening next month.

Conversation Pieces opens in July at Tate Liverpool in the UK and gives visitors a rare insight into the thought processes behind some of Treacy’s eccentric designs.

Philip Treacy is considered to be a ‘celebrity-milliner’ and has a whole host of famous friends and clients. He created a total of 36 bespoke hats for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in April.

This, of course, included the now infamous design for Princess Beatrice ultimately sold on eBay for over £80,000 for charity.

The exhibition will include works from Treacy’s personal art collection, as well as some of his most famous designs.

He has also selected his most inspirational pieces from the Tate’s collection, including artworks from Andy Warhol, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.

From his personal collection, Philip will loan a rare photograph of the late Isabella Blow – the fashion stylist and Treacy’s long-term muse. He is also exhibiting another picture taken by Bruce Weber that shows a model wearing his famous “Galleon Hat” from 1994, which was worn by Blow and singer, Grace Jones.

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Moscow was the focus of the Changing the Face competition by DuPont for 2011, in a mission to re-design the well known Pushkinsky Cinema in the city centre.

Changing the Face is an annual “open ideas” competition aimed at any architects, designers, builders and students who are willing to create a new identity for an existing building using DuPont materials.

The selected building is usually a well known landmark within the city that needs to be reconstructed or simply updated in tune with modern aesthetics.

This year, the attention was shifted to the “Pushkinsky Theatre” – a famous cinema, located at Pushkin Square in the heart of Moscow. It was originally built in 1961 to annually host the Moscow International Film Festival.

It has become a local landmark and was the template for all post-war performance halls in Russia.

Each year, 3 winners are selected from a high volume of applicants from around the world. Here are this year’s finalists:

1^st Place – “Frozen in Time” by Juan Andres Diaz Parra, Charlie Kentish and Evelyn Sam Soon (winners of €10,000)

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Fighting over the window seat could be a thing of the past with Airbus’ latest aircraft concept. The Transparent Plane not only plans to open our eyes to interactive air travel, but will also allow passengers to explore the sky as they travel.

The aircraft manufacturer unveiled its futuristic concept recently in London, predicting that its design of a see-through plane could become a reality by 2050.

Passengers of the future will be able discover the world from the comfort of their seats. These seats have also been built to adjust to the body shape of the passenger and guarantee to provide complete comfort and relaxation, despite the length of your flight.

The most fascinating aspect of the aircraft is the transparent exterior that will provide a window to the world.

The plane will be encased in a wall membrane which will have power over the air temperature and also react to the available light conditions, turning transparent when needed.

Inside the plane, passengers can enjoy an array of entertainment including interactive games which run on the heat generated by a passenger’s body. It will also provide much needed relief and distraction to nervous flyers.

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Video games have often been dogged by criticisms not only because of their partiality to be of a violent nature but also for the ‘sedentary’ lifestyles they cause.

Given the rampant critique of video games, referring to such entertainment as art rarely holds much prevalence. Although at E3, the annual video game conference and show held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the almost one-sided debate to whether video games could possibly be considered art is a closed-question, as the gallery-style exhibition is dedicated to proving that video games are most definitely art.

The “Into the Pixel” exhibition is now in its eighth year and comprises of 17 images that were selected out of hundreds of submissions. All the images have been created for video games and include subjects usually associated with video games such as spaceships, dragons and monsters, as well as more abstract images that would not look out of place in an Andy Warhol exhibition.

The video game images on display at the LA Convention Center have been created by a variety of electronic design companies ranging the major companies such as Sony to smaller independent games manufacturers.

Talking about video games emergence as a form of art, Tyler Breon, whose image “Cronos Battle” is displayed at this year’s E3, said:

“Video-game art, like other emerging art forms, needed time to earn wider acceptance. You look at all kinds of media that were new – anything that’s new, people aren’t really comfortable with initially.”

The same way in which comic books are now considered a form of creative expression and art after years of derision, Breon believes video games are moving within the same realms as other genres of art that started out to be considered crass and even vulgar.

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