Retrofuturism is a movement in the creative arts showing the influence of depictions of the future produced in an earlier era. If futurism is sometimes called a "science" bent on anticipating what will come, retrofuturism is the remembering of that anticipation. Characterized by a blend of old-fashioned "retro styles" with futuristic technology, retrofuturism explores the themes of tension between past and future, and between the alienating and empowering effects of technology. Primarily reflected in artistic creations and modified technologies that realize the imagined artifacts of its parallel reality, retrofuturism can be seen as "an animating perspective on the world".
Since the advent of the cyberpunk genre, a number of cyberpunk derivatives have become recognized in their own right as distinct subgenres in speculative fiction, especially in science fiction. Rather than necessarily sharing the digitally and mechanically focused setting of cyberpunk, these derivatives can display other futuristic, or even retrofuturistic, qualities that are drawn from or analogous to cyberpunk: a world built on one particular technology that is extrapolated to a highly sophisticated level, a gritty transreal urban style, or a particular approach to social themes.
Marco Polo di Suvero, better known as Mark di Suvero, is an abstract expressionist sculptor and 2010 National Medal of Arts recipient.
Anthony McCall is a British-born New York based artist known for his ‘solid-light’ installations, a series that he began in 1973 with "Line Describing a Cone," in which a volumetric form composed of projected light slowly evolves in three-dimensional space.
Flaming Lotus Girls is a volunteer-based group of artists who make large-scale kinetic fire art. FLG has been described as a "women-focused anarchist art collective." The group began in 2000, in San Francisco, California, as a group of six women and two men who wanted to gain the fabrication skills and design experience needed to create large sculptural installations. The group includes over a hundred members of all genders, and a majority of the members are women. Many of the sculptures have interactive elements, allowing the audience to control the lighting, flames, sound, or other effects. The collective's work has appeared throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands.
Ned Kahn is an environmental artist and sculptor, known in particular for museum exhibits, one of which is the Exploratorium in San Francisco. His work usually intends to make an invisible aspect of nature, visible.
"The Gernsback Continuum" is a 1981 science fiction short story by American-Canadian author William Gibson, originally published in the anthology Universe 11 edited by Terry Carr. It was later reprinted in Gibson's collection Burning Chrome, and in Mirrorshades, edited by Bruce Sterling. With some similarity to Gibson's later appraisal of Singapore for Wired magazine in Disneyland with the Death Penalty, as much essay as fiction, it depicts the encounters of an American photographer with the period futuristic architecture of the American 1930s when he is assigned to document it for fictional London publishers Barris-Watford, and the gradual incursion of its cinematic future visions into his world. The "Gernsback" of the title alludes to Hugo Gernsback, the pioneer of early 20th century American pulp magazine science fiction.
Teddy Lo is a Hong Kong-based artist known for his work with the medium and technology of light, especially LED light. His work explores neo-transcendental ideas in the physical-scientific world.
Christian Ristow is an American robotic artist. He is known for his robotic performance art under the name Robochrist Industries, his animatronics work in film and television, and his large-scale interactive sculptures.
Janet Echelman is an American sculptor and fiber artist. Her sculptures have been displayed as public art, often as site-specific installations.
Hearts in San Francisco is an annual public art installation started in 2004 by the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation for the purpose of fundraising. The project is inspired by the international CowParade exhibit, in which cow sculptures are painted by various artists and installed in various cities throughout the world. The choice of hearts is inspired by the Tony Bennett song "I Left My Heart in San Francisco."
Rafael Ferrer is a Puerto Rican artist.
The Flux Foundation is a non-profit group based in the San Francisco Bay Area whose main objective is to build community through the creation of large-scale public art. The group creates both public art and public artists. It was founded on April 1, 2010 and was established as a California corporation on January 6, 2011, by Rebecca Anders, Jessica Hobbs, Peter (PK) Kimelman, Catherine Magee and Colinne Hemrich.
The Bay Lights were a site-specific monumental light sculpture and generative art installation on the western span of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, designed to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its opening. The installation by light artist Leo Villareal included 25,000 individual white LEDs along 1.8 miles (2.9 km) of the cables on the north side of the suspension span of the bridge between Yerba Buena Island and San Francisco. The installation was controlled via a computer and displayed changing patterns that were not meant to repeat. The opening ceremony was held on March 5, 2013.
Three Heads Six Arms is a sculpture by Chinese artist Zhang Huan. The work, composed of copper and steel, is 27 feet (8.2 m) tall and weighs 15 short tons (14 t). From May 2010 to February 2011, the sculpture was installed at the Joseph L. Alioto Performing Arts Piazza in San Francisco's Civic Center, before moving to Hong Kong later that year from May to July. A slightly modified version was exhibited in Florence in 2013.
Joyce J. Scott is an African-American artist, sculptor, quilter, performance artist, installation artist, print-maker, lecturer and educator. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016, and a Smithsonian Visionary Artist in 2019, Scott is best known for her figurative sculptures and jewelry using free form, off-loom beadweaving techniques, similar to a peyote stitch. Each piece is often constructed using thousands of glass seed beads or pony beads, and sometimes other found objects or materials such as glass, quilting and leather. In 2018, she was hailed for working in new medium — a mixture of soil, clay, straw, and cement — for a sculpture meant to disintegrate and return to the earth. Scott is influenced by a variety of diverse cultures, including Native American and African traditions, Mexican, Czech, and Russian beadwork, illustration and comic books, and pop culture.
Jen Lewin is an American interactive artist and engineer. She is based in New York City and specializes in large scale installations in public spaces, usually combining elements such as light, sound and complex engineering. Her interactive light installation The Pool debuted in 2008 and has been exhibited across the globe, in cities such as Singapore, Sydney, Denver, Montréal and Prague, and in events such as South By Southwest and Burning Man.
The Neverwas Haul is a three-story, self-propelled mobile art vehicle built to resemble a Victorian house on wheels. Inspired by the fantastical stories of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, the Haul was designed by Shannon O’Hare and built by a crew of volunteers at the Shipyard art space in Berkeley, CA, in 2006. Originally intended to be a ‘mutant vehicle’ for the Burning Man art festival in Nevada, the Haul is made from 75% recycled materials, and measures 24 feet long, 24 feet high, and 12 feet wide. It is built on the base of a fifth-wheel trailer, and the second and third story of the structure pack down into the first for highway towing. When fully built and decked out for exhibition at Burning Man, the Haul is able to propel itself at a top speed of 5 miles per hour and requires a crew of ten people to operate safely. Currently, the Neverwas Haul makes her home at Obtainium Works, an “art car factory” in Vallejo, CA, owned by O’Hare and home to several other self-styled “contraptionists.”
Invisible Man and the Masque of Blackness was an art installation by Zak Ové that has been installed in several major cities. It features 40 identical statues, each weighing approximately 300 lbs.
Ryan C. Doyle is a visual artist known for his large-scale fabricated sculptures, parade floats, art cars, and sculptures, sometimes involving robotics, animatronics, pyrotechnics, and military technologies. He is from the Twin Cities, Minnesota, and resides in Detroit, Michigan, where he has contributed to permanent installations at The Lincoln Street Art Park and Recycle Here! recycling center.
