Showing posts with label vision. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vision. Show all posts
Saturday, February 28, 2026
camouflage exhibit opens tomorrow / Washington DC
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
exciting new exhibition at spy museum coming soon
The interview was conducted by a wonderful radio host named Ben Kieffer, who is featured daily at noon during the week on Iowa Public Radio on a program called River to River. He was wonderful, as was Kathryn Keane (who spoke so eloquently and without a single flaw), who is one of the top executives at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC.
Our tandem interviews came about because that museum is about to open a new, major exhibition about camouflage (called Camouflage: Designed to Deceive), beginning March 1 and continuing for three years. You can find out more about the exhibition contents online at the museum's website. And you'll also find details about the exhibition catalog (for which I wrote the introduction) online here.
Saturday, May 3, 2025
Wol I thought you was part of the camouflage scheme
•••
CAP’N CALEB’S CAMOUFLAGE in Punch, June 12, 1918, p. 374.
He was an object of interest in the bar of “The Sloop,” for he was one of the crew of a vessel which had been torpedoed off the headland during the night, and he had been landed with other survivors at the fishing village that morning.
“Yes, it gives yer a shock being torpedoed,” he said in answer to a question; “but I'm orlright now, and I'll be better when I've 'ad some more beer. I ain't lost my thirst, not that you could notice, though I was blown up in the air when the torpedo 'it us, and came down in the sea.”
The questioner took the hint and ordered another pint of beer, which the shipwrecked mariner drank deliberately with the air of a connoisseur.
“It ain't bad beer that, boss," he remarked politely to the landlord; "but I reckon a man would get waterlogged before 'e could get drunk on it.”
The landlord smiled and discreetly turned the oonversation back to the subject of the submarine menace.
“No, I ain't afraid o’ submarines, but my missus is;” said the mariner; ”that's why I'm 'ere. I’ve been torpedoed twice this year, and my missus is to blame. But it serves me right for listening to ‘er and leavin’ the old Saucy Anne.”
“It all comes o’ this cammyflage ideas,” he went on with a heavy sigh. "If it ‘adn't been for old Cap'n Caleb's a-cammyflagin‘ the Saucy Anne the missus'd never've got the wind up about submarines and I'd never've been torpedoed. And I wouldn't be standin’ ‘ere now with an empty glass in me ‘and."
It was the landlord who took the hint this time end hastened to remedy the defect.
It was like this, y'see," resumed the victim of camouflage when he had again refreshed himself. "I was third mate on the Saucy Anne—not that third mate meant much, 'cos the crew was only four all told and the Saucy Anne was a little old steamer o' two hundred ton gross. But she was a nice little craft, and old Cap'n Caleb Collins, what was master and owner, was one o' the best—treated us more like pals! than a crew, 'e did.
”Five year I'd been third mate on the Saucy Anne when the War started, bringin' coal from Cardiff to Port Carbis, and home regular every ten days. Cap’n Caleb ’ad been doin’ that for twenty year, and he jest went on doin' it and never worried hisself about the, War.
“Then the German submarines started their dirty work and sunk a Port Carbis boat; but our old man took no notice and kep' on sailin' reg’lar—said he'd like to see any blinkin' German tryin' to sink 'im. Well, two more Port Carbis vessels was sunk, and some o' the other skippers starts what they calls ‘protectin’ themselves'; but Cap'n Caleb never did nothin'. Then a chap in uniform comes down to Port Carbis and he starts explainin' this 'ere cammy-flagin' idea to the owners.”
He paused to empty his glass once more, wiped his mouth with the back of his hairy hand and proceeded with his story.
"The officer, or whatever he was, tells Cap'n Caleb about paintin' the Saucy Anne to cammyflage 'er, and the old man listens attentive. ‘Yes,' says 'e, I sees the notion, Sir. The old ship could do with a coat o' paint, 'er not 'aving 'ad much this seven year, and I'll see about cammyflagin’ 'er myself. We've got some artist chaps 'ere in Port Carbis,' says the Cap'n, and I'll 'are the Saucy Anne cammyflaged proper,' 'e says.
"So Cap'n Caleb 'e lays the old ship up for a week, runs 'er inter a boat-builder's yard and gets an artist and a sign-painter from the town to come and 'ave a go at cammyflagin' the Saucy Anne. He never let none o’ the crew nor nobody see 'er, and when the painters was done 'e 'as 'er refloated, but with big tarpaulins 'anging down 'er sides to protect the new cammyflage paint, 'e says. Not till we was loaded and casting off from the quay does 'e let us reef them tarpaulins.
"I knowed there was something funny about as as soon as the Saucy Anne starts steamin’ out o' the 'arbour,' 'cos the crowd on the jetty starts runnin' along to watch us, and some of 'em cheered and waved their 'ats. So I takes a good squint overside to see wind our now caummyflage looks like—and I nearly fell overboard with the shock when I sees what Cap'n Caleb 'ad 'ad done.
"There was a big Union Jack painted right down the bows o' the Saucy Anne; 'er sides was painted bright blue; and in white letters on 'em—big white letters you could have read a mile away almost—right along from the bows to the stern, there was painted:—
‘BRITISH—AND DAMN YOUR SUBMARINES!'”
The listeners in the bar of “The Sloop" gasped, restrained an inclination to cheer, and some of them almost struggled for the privilege of buying the shipwrecked mariner more beer.
“Surprised? You're right," he resumed with a reminiscent grin. "I was surprised, so was the rest of the crew, and so was everybody in Port Carbis. When the bloke at the Admiralty station on the point outside the bay saw us 'o nearly 'ad 'ysterics and starts wagging flags at us; but Cap’n Caleb takes no notice. ‘I'il give 'em cammyllage’ he says, looking as proud as punch.”
“Well, we gets to Cardiff, and a fine how-d'-ye-do there was there, I can tell yer. ‘I reckon they think the Saucy Anne is the Royal yacht,' says the Cap’n solemn-like, when they starts cheerin’ us from other ships and blowin' sirens, and a crowd comes down to the wharf to welcome us. We all had plenty o' free beer that night—all 'cept the Cap'n, ‘im being a teetotaler end never drinkin' nothin' but gin.
In the morning down comes an old chap with gold braid and brass buttons to the wharf, just as Cap'n Caleb was standin' admirin' the Saucy Anne. 'E takes a look at our ship, then 'e goes red in the face.
“‘Wot does this moan, Cap’n?’ ‘e says.
“'That's my cammyflage, Sir,' says Cap'n Caleb, 'aud that’s my motter on the ship's side.’
“The old bloke in the gold braid starts argyfyin', but I could see 'e was laughin’ inside, and presently he shakes 'ands with our old man, gives ‘im a cigar and goes away.
"Well, to cut a lomg story short, we sails back to Port Carbis, and there's a crowd to meet us, cheerin' like billyoh; but when I gets ashore them's my missus on the quay, cryin’ ‘er eyes out. Said she'd never expected to see me again, and begged an’ prayed too not to make another voyage in the Saucy Anne. She said it was temptin' Providence to sail in a vessel painted like that, and we'd get torpedoed next trip as sure as sure.
I argues with 'er till I was nearly black in the face, then I gives way and does what she asks for the sake of peace and quiet. Cap'n Caleb 'o said it was like deserting in face of the enemy, but I left ‘im for the sake of the missus and got another ship."
He gazed into his glass and mournfully shook his head.
"Yes, it's all the fault of the missus," he concluded with a sigh. "I tried another ship, and got torpedoed first voyage, and now 'ere I am torpedoed again. It's almost enough to make a man turn teetotal. The Saucy Anne’s still runnin’ and never been touched; but I did ‘ear as the Admiralty made Cap'n Caleb put some other kind o' cammyflage on her."
RELATED LINKS
Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? / Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage / Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage / Optical science meets visual art / Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness / Under the big top at Sims' circus
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Saturday, June 22, 2024
Monday, December 25, 2023
John Brown fifty years ago / remembering a colleague
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| Painting by John Brown 1972 |
I don’t know the title of the painting, if it had one. But no doubt one reason I bought it is because it so strongly pertains to figure-ground blending or background matching, as is so commonly observed in camouflage, both natural and military.
John was originally from Cedar Falls. He majored in landscape architecture at Iowa State University (Ames), but dropped out in favor of studying art. He completed his BA in Art in 1956 at UNI, then worked for a number of years as a graphic designer and illustrator. He made "studio art" on the side, and was awarded various prizes for his innovative paintings.
At some point he joined the faculty as an instructor of painting. I graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design at the end of 1971, and was invited to teach at UNI in the following spring semester, and I think he was on the faculty then. In the years that followed, he and I (and others) were among the teachers in a highly unusual, untested approach to art foundations, called the Visual World Program.
That program had been launched in the fall semester of 1971 by a newly-hired department head from San Francisco, a man named Kenneth Lash, who had been the Head of Humanities at the San Francisco Art Institute. A rather odd aspect of this was that Lash was not a visual artist but a writer—a poet and an essayist, whom I had initially met in the summer of 1968 at the Aspen School of Contemporary Art in Colorado.
Given that the Visual World curriculum was a quasi-subversive departure from standard foundations courses, as detailed in textbooks at the time, it was controversial from the start. Some of the departmental faculty welcomed it, while others were wary, hesitant or confused. The latter complained they were clueless: What was the program all about? What was it supposed to accomplish? How could it be defined? As I recall, when Lash was approached with questions like that, he would typically reply that the program would eventually shape itself, over a year or two, in the process of trying to teach it.
Some of us reached out to other disciplines. We devised activities that stressed creativity (innovation, humor and problem-solving), perceptual psychology, and the interplay of usually disparate fields. We brought in a stage magician to demonstrate sleight of hand; worked with the physics faculty in making holograms; learned from biologists about the use by ethologists of behavioral dummies; explored stereoscopic vision (including random dot stereograms); constructed airborne works of art; recreated some of the Ames Demonstrations, while learning about their historical link to linear perspective; and so on.
There were deliberate efforts to teach as much through physical engagement as through attending lectures. On occasion, oddball contests were arranged, two of which I still remember vididly: the infamous Rube Goldberg Drawing Machine Contest, and the Groucho Marx Look-Alike Contest.
There were also eccentric exhibits, one of which was originated by John Brown. He partitioned off a section of the floor space in the gallery, then set free within that space an impressive selection of battery-powered motion toys, of the sort that, if collided with, they would adjust their course and continue to move. The full effect consisted of random collisions of various things, like non-stop vehicle mishaps—which continued for a couple of days, until at last the batteries died.
In 1975, Ken Lash and I co-authored an article that was published in Leonardo: Journal of the International Society of Arts, Sciences and Technology (published then by Pergamon Press, it was soon after acquired by MIT Press, and continues now as Leonardo). In that article, titled “The ‘Visual World’ Program at the University of Northern Iowa, USA,” we cited one of John Brown’s most memorable classroom assignments. Known as “the Lemon Experiment,” we described it in the article more or less as follows (although with substantial revison):
A class of twenty students is presented with a shopping bag containing fresh lemons. Each student then selects, randomly, any lemon from the bag. They are told: “Take your lemon with you. Look at it, feel it, smell it. Carry it with you wherever you go, even when you go to sleep. Get to know as much as you can about your lemon without marking, cutting or biting it. Then bring it to class with you when we meet again in two days.”
At the next class meeting, all the lemons are returned to the grocery bag, then spread out on a table top. The students are instructed to retrieve their particular lemons. They are inevitably amazed to find that, with little difficulty, they can indeed identify them. They mostly do this using sight. But some of them, even when blindfolded, can find their lemons by touch and smell. They are left with a new understanding of the rich range of attributes that can be observed and recognized in things that may initially look as if they were indistinguishable.
In a subsequent phase, the students are asked to draw maps of their lemons, which might enable someone else to identify their lemon. Or, in a “lemon substitution” phase, they are asked to create visual puns by purposely misplacing lemons in usually mistaken contexts, such as a “lemon dirigible” or a “lemon pencil sharpener.” They are also assigned to produce a “counterfeit lemon” from any mix of materials (sponges, stuffed socks, or whatever) to explore the possible links between vastly different types of things.
Around 1976, I moved on to another university. John Brown stayed on at UNI, but he too eventually left. Looking through old issues of the student newspaper, there is a story from 1975 which reports that his students had constructed a large “floating painting” which they launched on Prexy’s Pond, a pond near the center of campus. Another one, two years later, shows him with one of his classes. They had been asked to design a package in which a raw egg would survive undamaged when the package was dropped from a building.
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| John Brown with students |
Thursday, November 9, 2023
don't paint your Chevy Blazer in high visibility orange
•••
The following interview was conducted through email exchanges in the early months of 2013. It was a conversation between Rich Dana, now Special Collections and Archives' Sackner Archive Project coordinator librarian at the University of Iowa, and Roy R. Behrens, now Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Scholar at the University of Northern Iowa. The resulting text was published in Issue Number 8 of Obsolete! Magazine: The Journal of DIY Analog Anarchy (Iowa City IA), which Dana was founding editor of, an experimental magazine that is now apparently obsolete (aha!). In its published form, the interview was a bit longer, and slight adjustments in wording have also been made. Copyright for the text belongs to the interview participants.
•••
Obsolete Magazine [Rich Dana]: I discovered your work while doing some research on dazzle camouflage. You’ve written quite a bit about dazzle patterns as well as the role of artists in the history of camouflage. Can you give us some background on how you became interested in that?
Roy Behrens: I started writing about it in the late 1960s. I got into camouflage because I was a graphic designer. The big “trade secret” in design is knowing how people are likely to see. At some point I realized that I could learn about that by hiding or disguising things. In other words, camouflage uses the exact same principles as design. It’s just reverse engineering.
OM: Was this like subliminal advertising?
RB: It’s certainly not unrelated to that, but they’re not the same. In subliminal advertising, it was claimed that images were concealed in magazine ads and film trailers, to function as “hidden persuaders.” The principles that we apply in design and camouflage are more straightforward, such as pointing, rhyming and lining things up. They are subliminal to some extent, because they influence us, regardless of whether we are aware of it.
OM: Obviously, the idea of camouflage is an ancient one. When did it become a field of scientific research?
RB: We can thank Charles Darwin for that. Scientists and naturalists became interested in animal camouflage in the late 19th century, because they thought it offered proof of natural selection, the survival of the fittest. But a big breakthrough came in the 1890s when an American artist named Abbott Handerson Thayer realized that camouflage is based on the same “tricks of the trade” that he had learned while studying art at the French Academy.
OM: I'm fascinated by the idea that camo is a type of art that is used to defeat technology. It seems that it’s almost akin to magic to me. Of course, Arthur C. Clarke said that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Is camouflage art, technology or both?
RB: I think it’s pertinent to both art and technology, but to lots of other stuff as well. The key thing to remember is that camouflage depends on a relationship. It’s a perpetually shifting relation between an observer (these days it could be a drone or whatever) and the object or person that’s being observed. A deer can’t see high visibility orange, but that same color is blaringly obvious to humans. To camouflage something, you have to know what kind of visual system you are trying to conceal it from. In other words, camouflage has to keep up with surveillance, and vice versa—it takes two to tango.
OM: Camo is typically associated with the military. Are there civilian uses for camo, other than hunting?
RB: Actually, there’s a long rich tradition of using camouflage for non-military purposes. For example, you just mentioned magic, which famously works by “fooling the eye.” And there are lots of other uses in stage productions, fashion design, cosmetics, architecture and so on. And of course, some of the most successful camouflage practitioners are in marketing and politics. Camouflage is also used in other forms such as language. Maybe I should mention that recently I’ve been exchanging emails with a university student in the UK who’s working on proposals for benign, non-military uses of camouflage. There’s a lot that could be done in that area. Mostly he’s developing ways to make certain things around us (windmills or cell towers, for example) less like eyesores, and, at same time, to make critical landmarks more conspicuous. But this is a shifting relation as well: Since it’s common now for everyone to walk around in camouflage or high visibility orange clothing, it’s not as easy to be sure who’s really an emergency worker and who isn’t.
OM: Let's talk about dazzle camouflage. To me, dazzle represents very much the spirit of the Modern era. Does that make sense? It seems to be consistent with what was going on at the start of the 20th century, technologically and artistically, and, in some ways, even in psychology, in the use of abstract patterns, and so on.
RB: Over the years, a lot people have said exactly that about the resemblance between camouflage and certain branches of Modernism. During World War I, one of the British Vorticists [Edward Wadsworth] was a dock supervisor for ship camouflage. And there’s the famous story about Picasso seeing French military camouflage for the first time, and saying to Gertrude Stein, “Aha, we invented that. That’s Cubism.” There’s a ton of other examples of this, and my books are attempts to identify those. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of artists, designers and architects served as military camouflage consultants (they ecame known as “camoufleurs”) during both World Wars. But oddly enough,those who were responsible for the most bizarre dazzle patterns had been mostly traditional artists before. And after the war ended, their art careers completely collapsed—because, ironically, their artwork wasn’t Modern enough.
OM: Can you talk a little about how dazzle was conceived and developed, and what made dazzle patterns effective?
RB: The term as it’s now commonly used is more or less synonymous with any pattern that is made up of a hodgepodge of high contrast, distinctively-colored shapes. I call it “high difference” camouflage (because the figure breaks apart), and I distinguish it from “high similarity” camouflage (in which a figure blends in with its background or surrounding). Historically, however, the meaning and purpose of “dazzle painting” was much more specific. It was a kind of ship camouflage that was developed by British artists during World War I. Its primary function was not to hide a ship on the ocean (that wasn’t possible back then), but rather to make it confusing to view through the periscope of a German U-boat. It’s a complex subject, but the idea was mostly to “spoil the aim” (to throw off the calculations) of submarine torpedo gunners. It’s popular now for people to say that dazzle painting was ineffective, but the more you learn about the circumstances, the more apparent it becomes that it did indeed work.
OM: I’ve noticed that dazzle patterns are increasingly used in fashion. Asymmetrical haircuts and face-paint are being used successfully to subvert facial recognition software and surveillance cameras. Any thoughts on this? It's a very 80's cyberpunk dystopian sci-fi look. I love it! But do you think it will be effective? It seems to have a deus ex machina quality to it, in the sense that it undermines digital technology, not with more advanced technology, but with age-old simple tools like abstraction and facepainting.
RB: That’s a curious turnabout, isn’t it. I’ve been following the research on how to prevent digital face recognition, and apparently it works for now. But that too is indebted to Modernism, since it’s related to research that began with the Gestalt psychologists in the 1920s. Not surprisingly, the Gestaltists also wrote about camouflage, and about graphic design principles.
OM: That's really interesting. So essentially it’s about how the brain processes data that it receives from the eyes. Facial recognition computers programs look for geometric specifics of the structure of the face, rather than hair color, skin color, etc, which are really culturally programmed ways that humans see.
RB: Much of what we’re talking about is being confirmed by current brain research. There seem to be aspects of vision that are learned and culture-laden. On the other hand (and this especially interests me), there are also inherent, hard-wired defaults of vision that “come in the box” with everyone’s brain. If we go to war with another country, we can be sure that they will be hoodwinked (to some extent) by the same camouflage patterns that throw us off: figure-ground blending, figure disruption (or dazzle), mimicry, and the combined use of blending and dazzle.
OM: Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think historically there are a lot of examples of technologically “inferior” forces defeating vastly "superior" forces by using the environment to their advantage. Doesn't it seem like the growing surveillance state will always be running to catch up with the low-tech workarounds of the indigenous population?
RB: Well, you could put it that way. Again, the two sides have to correlate, and conditions are constantly changing. But in a way, everything’s a workaround, whether low tech or high. So you could say that, yes, high tech will always be struggling to keep one step ahead of Rube Goldbergian workarounds. But in the same way, low tech will always be struggling to jerry-rig new workarounds. One thing is certain: their dance is unlikely to ever conclude, short of a massive, finite end.
OM: I’m changing direction here: I started thinking about this when I bought an old Chevy Blazer from the National Guard. It is painted "forest" camo, I guess you would call it, mostly olive drab with black and brown. It's a spray can job, so it’s wearing out fast and I need to repaint it. So I began researching other patterns, and thinking about the Iowa landscape. Ideally, what sort of patterns and colors would be most effective in our environment?
RB: It depends on why you’re doing this. If you effectively decrease the vehicle’s visibility by matching it with the Iowa landscape, you might increase your chances of getting hit by another driver. And even then, what is the “Iowa landscape”? Urban, woodland, cornfield, grass? And in what season of the year? Now and then I’ve thought about putting a camouflage pattern on my car, but I’ve always opted out. In relation to choosing a season, if I painted it white for the winter, I wouldn’t want to drive it home during one of those Iowa snowstorm white-outs.
OM: I also considered putting a WWI naval dazzle pattern on it, just as an art project. It would be sort of ironic because it would be the most noticeable vehicle in the parking lot.
RB: I thought about this too, when I was considering my own car. Like you, I have a great fondness for dazzle patterns, so I thought I wouldn’t want my car to blend with the surroundings. I would prefer that it stand out dramatically (like those WWI dazzle-painted ships), and be painted in a clever way that uses confusing brightly-colored shapes to distort the physical shape of the car. But then I thought, that’s really asking for trouble: First, it would stand out in the parking lot and probably get vandalized. Second, when I’m on the road, it might be so confusing to see that I could end up getting hit. Or third, if it’s too distracting to other drivers, they might collide with other cars. Well, whatever you decide, don’t paint your Chevy Blazer in high visibility orange—or you’ll get run into by a deer.
OM: Ha! That would be ironic to say the least! Here's a thought; from what you have said about relationships, landscape and how people see, perhaps a car painted with primer would be the best all purpose camouflage. Culturally, I think people might look past it because primer paint represents lower social status. Just the way people look past a homeless person on the street. Parked in a lot it might be less likely to be broken into. In a field, it might be seen as abandoned. On the flipside of course, driving home late at night, it might be more likely to draw the attention of law enforcement, who are programmed to see something else.
RB: If we continue with this train of thought, we may end up putting antlers on your car, covering it with flocked wallpaper—or better yet, with chia sprouts—and transforming it into an automated jackalope. That might cut down on traffic too, since no one else would want to be seen driving beside it.…
RELATED LINKS
Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?
Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage
Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage
Sunday, November 5, 2023
Norman Wilkinson / use railway stations as galleries
•••
KMD, Listening in on the World, in Fayetteville Democrat (Fayetteville AR) January 14, 1926, p. 2—
There is an interesting movement on foot in England at the present time. Its aim is to convert the great "railway stations" into art centers for the people. Norman Wilkinson, marine painter of great distinction, is the leader of the group, who are working out this idea.
Norman Wilkinson is a man of many gifts. His name is well-known in the navy for it was he who invented "dazzle-painting." It will be remembered that the introduction of this method of camouflaging ships was one of the turning-points of the war. Along with his charming young wife, Mr. Wilkinson visited Washington in 1918 by invitation of the naval authorities, to whom he explained his system.
In an unusual manner Norman Wilkinson combines the qualities of an artist with those of a business man. When not engaged on his large canvases, one of which sells for many thousands of dollars, he has never been too proud to put some fine work into poster for a shipping company. These posters are naturally much better than the average, and it has been noticed that the crowds in the waiting rooms where they hang, are not, as might have been expected, indifferent to their superiority. On the contrary, the beauty of these marine subjects seems to be much appreciated by "the man in the street." Now artists of the first note are engaged in making the former dingy waiting-rooms into homes of beauty and cheer. Listening In American depots, being large and well-designed, would lend themselves admirably to a similar purpose. They are indeed far more suited to it than those in Great Britain. We are in correspondence with Norman Wilkinson and hope soon to let the readers hear more about his ideas.
SEE ALSO
Camilla Wilkinson article on dazzle camouflage
Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage (26 min. video talk)
Monday, July 3, 2023
ship camouflage artist remembers Norman Wilkinson
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| Rogers' ship camouflage proposal |
Of further interest is the fact that he contributed to ship camouflage, American and British, in both world wars. I discovered this in one of his books, Freak Ships (New York: Greenberg Publishers, 1936), a book about odd aspects of maritime history. In that book, he includes three of his drawings of WWI-era ship camouflage, as reproduced in this blog post.
In the first drawing, he shows a plan for ship camouflage (above) that he himself submitted to the US Navy Department, early in the war (c1917-18). His proposal was turned down—he says thankfully—as being ineffective.
I was not sorry my designs were rejected [he states, because] they were based on the general rule that vessels show dark against the skyline, and by painting them in wavy horizontal dazzle bands of pale hues, the bands near the water being darker than those on the superstructure which tried to effect a compromise with the tone of the sky. Obviously a compromise, since the changing light of the sky makes it impossible for a ship to meet every condition. Thus a pearl-gray ship against a hazy bright sky would be practically invisible, but with a dark cloud behind her she would stand out a clear white silhouette. Likewise a dark gray hull against a black storm cloud is practically invisible, but against the skyline of a normal day her presence would be advertised for twenty miles. Youthfully, and erroneously, I thought a working compromise could be reached. The initial mistake was to imagine that a vessel could be made invisible or nearly so under most conditions.
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| Wilkinson's ship camouflage proposal (approximate) |
and concerned himself with perfecting a camouflage that, while making no claim to rendering a ship invisible, did however so break up its familiar shape that a distant observer, especially at the eye-piece of a submarine’s periscope, could not accurately estimate its course or speed.
He goes on to say quite a bit more about the development of ship camouflage, especially during WWI, when the dazzle system was first adapted—
Naval camouflage was not new in 1914…In 1917 when the German submarine menace made it imperative to find more efficient protection to British shipping, both naval and mercantile, Norman Wilkinson, the famous marine painter, with temporary quarter-deck rank in the RNVR, put forward a set of designs for ship camouflage that was later adopted by all the Allied navies. I have already indicated the nature of this plan. The scheme was something entirely new and became known to the public as camouflage and to the Admiralty as dazzle painting. The inventor’s sole claim was to distort the shape of a vessel sufficiently to confuse the enemy as to her course, though it also disguised her type and size to a great extent. A submarine commander, peering through the watery lens of a periscope, found it almost impossible to judge the victim’s course accurately enough to justify his risking a costly torpedo on her. The illustration is handicapped by the limitations of black and white, but may convey an idea of how this deception was achieved. It will be noticed that the violently contrasting patterns and colors immediately break up the lines of the vessel, making it difficult, even in a drawing, to decide exactly the ship’s orientation. The laws of perspective are set at naught. As soon as the virtues of the artist’s scheme were thoroughly grasped by some of its more conservative objectors in the Admiralty an emergency act was passed making it obligatory for all British ships to be so painted.
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| Rogers' drawing of periscope view |
A dazzle-painted ship looked like nothing on sea or land. The distortion, a better word than disguise, was almost perfect. To a new arrival from another world the sight of a dazzle-painted ship would give him reason to think terrestrial folk were crazy. For the essence of dazzle-painting is to follow no logical lines of pattern. Dazzle-painting, while being profoundly logical, owed its value to its apparently senseless chaos of lines. The art is to conceal the art. The adage might have been written especially for dazzle-painting.
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| title page of Rogers' book (1936) |
Stanley R.H. Rogers was born in Nottingham, England, but his family moved to Olympia WA, when he was still an infant. He returned to England in advance of WWI, and studied art in London at Goldsmith’s College. At school he met his future wife, also an illustrator, named Franke (née Woodhouse) Rogers, who illustrated about 50 children’s books in her lifetime. The couple resided in England from 1920-1945, and during WWII, Stanley Rogers served as a Royal Navy camoufleur, as a civilian. After the war, the couple lived in the vicinity of New York, where Rogers died in 1916.
Also see this earlier post, in which Norman Wilkinson's granddaughter, British architect Camilla Wilkinson, is interviewed about ship camouflage.
Thursday, June 8, 2023
Saturday, October 8, 2022
Part 03 has been posted / Ames and Anamorphosis
This part primarily focuses on Ames' influence on others, among them scientists, filmmakers, and artists, especially by his targeted use of anamorphosis (aka "forced perspective") in his well-known laboratory set-ups. It reveals the little-known links between Ames' experiments, Vorticism, and avant-garde filmmaking (Ballet Mécanique), as well as in popular culture, such as cinematic special effects and roadside tourist attractions.
In conclusion, it also provides a close-up look at the recent works of three contemporary visual artists, who, in one way or another, make astonishing use of perspective. They are Jan Beutener (Amsterdam), Richard Koenig (Kalamazoo MI), and Patrick Hughes (London).
All three parts of the trilogy (about 90 minutes in combined length) can be accessed online free at my YouTube channel at <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzYrUfsAvkZur5cBv6xlhSg>. Of course, I am eager for others to see this. Do not hesitate to share it with anyone and everyone who might find it of value or interest.
Sunday, September 25, 2022
illusionistic room interiors / windows that do not rotate
Saturday, February 19, 2022
GTA Links to New Gestalt Theory Related Videos
There is a list of all of all our films on our YouTube Channel here. There will soon be more.
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
British Gestalt Journal / gestalt and camouflage videos
Monday, November 1, 2021
Jan Koenderink / to see is to sneeze—in this respect
Visual awareness is proto-mind stuff. Here I am thinking of the Gestalts or the classical illusions, which are cognitively inpenetrable. Even if you are an expert on a certain illusion, you still see it, cognition doesn’t make it go away. Likewise, a Gestalt like the famous Kanizsa triangle [as shown above] is stubbornly there—in your visual awareness, even though you know that “there is no triangle.” Visual awareness is presentation in the sense that it simply happens to you. Nothing you can do about it, nor are you responsible for the presentations you have. It is much like sneezing in this respect.
Also see Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage (28 min. video talk)
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
attribute rhymes, proximity, and aligned continuities
Camouflage artists are not alone in making use of unit-forming factors. As is evidenced by this series of posters, graphic designers make incessant daily use of attribute similarities, proximity, and aligned continuities. Each of these posters is a tribute to a different variety of design (they represent—from left to right—graphic, industrial, and interior design). While each is unique, they hold together as a suite, like a set of dinnerware, as variations on a theme. Recurrent circles (in the form of a plate, a sphere, and side views of a circular table and lamp) are an especially important motif. More>>>
suite of design-themed posters (designer unknown)
Sunday, November 29, 2020
a ruler proves / are you bow-legged or knock-kneed?
Which one of these figures has bowlegs and which knock-knees? Easy to see that the knees of the one on the right incline toward each other, while the other gentleman carries his legs on a gentle outward curve?
Easy, is it?
Well, it so happens that neither of them is knock-kneed or bow-legged. In fact the legs of both of them are perfectly straight. Take a ruler and prove it. It's just simply a case of the eyes being deceived. An optical illusion and a very common one.
There are a lot of things like that. No two persons see the same thing alike and when a thing is made with intent to deceive, as this was, it would take an expert to discover the deception.
Actors take advantage of this fact in their make-up on the stage, and dressmakers are known to use it. For instance, a short, stout woman wearing a dress with horizontal stripes will look still shorter and fatter with horizontal stripes will look still shorter and fatter and a tall, thin woman wearing a dress with perpendicular stripes will look taller and thinner.
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