Dazzle Camouflage Rhymes with Shipping Containers
Image: Leonhard Rothmoser.
Most things that we use and consume reach us though complex global shipping processes. They’re systems we know exist but don’t necessarily grasp the full extent of. When they work, products and goods materialise as if out of thin air, with no effort on our part.
An important innovation that made this magic possible is the modern shipping container. These International Standards Organization-certified (ISO) containers are the backbone of modern logistics. The main difference between them and the hundreds of unruly sacks previously used to move grains and other goods is their ridged metal surface, a particular and recognisable type of corrugation specifically designed for container side panels. It is lightweight yet robust, enabling the containers to be stacked and thereby allowing huge quantities of things to be moved across the ocean at the same time.
Container technology, and just as importantly its standardisation, has revolutionised the global shipping industry since its invention in the 1950s, and this shift in how we move objects is one reason why goods made in China can be cheaper than local counterparts in the rest of the world. Its unsurpassed efficiency made the idea of physical distance less relevant, blurring the border between here and there. Today, we can frequently neither see, nor comprehend, the distance between manufacture and consumption thanks to the ease of movement and availability of goods that come with the shipping container.
Prior to these changes, during the First World War, the British Navy invented dazzle camouflage. Thought to be one of the first human-made camouflage designs, this iconic pattern, with its randomly placed stripes in various widths and pitches, was intended to obscure a ship’s direction and speed of travel, making it difficult for an enemy to aim at it accurately. The camouflage proved effective, given that visual references were used heavily for locating ships at sea, and demonstrated that our perception of physical objects can be manipulated to gain an advantage. The pattern was applied on all types of vessels, but particularly on ships carrying supplies across the North Sea, where German U-boats presented a substantial threat, disrupting the British supply chain. It was widely used until the Second World War, when locating ships using sonar became the standard, making visual camouflage redundant.
Unlike dazzle camouflage, the shipping container has more or less retained its original function through the years. But during the Covid-19 lockdowns, as we witnessed the piling up of shipping containers in ports and the spread of empty shelves in shops, it was made clear how complicated and fragile the world of logistics really is. What we thought were discreet stagehands in our lives turned out to be precarious contraptions in need of constant attention. Echoing the way in which sonar made ships visible again, lockdown broke the veneer of technological sophistication, and in turn made us appreciate the invisible processes that make the things we take for granted possible.
Words Tetsuo Mukai
Illustration Leonhard Rothmoser
This article was originally published in Disegno #37. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.