Ben Pell Lecture Notes

Four paintings by Agnes Martin

An Agnes Martin appreciation

 

"Tent Room" at Charlottenhof by K.F.Schinkel (1830)

EPSALIER, the french horticultural technique of training trees to behave “two-dimensional” 

WWI Dazzle Camouflage

Dazzle camouflage is an unlikely technique, where the object is to confuse rather than conceal. It is a system that operates based not on normal visual rules, but by understanding the targeting technique of the day. (This is akin to orange hunting camouflage, which simultaneously keeps hunters visible to other hunters but invisible to color-blind deer). Submarines and long-range targeting vessels used RANGEFINDERS [linked image: left is unfocused, right is focused] to optically determine location, heading, speed, and size. Rangefinders use a parallax prism that splits the image of the object. When the two ghost images converge, you are “in focus” and can determine long distance information. Dazzle was thought to confuse the rangefinders and make it impossible to target. Mixed results resulted in abandoning the system by WWII.