BOKEH Adverts

fall 2022 :: 1

2 :: bokeh

fall 2022 :: 3

4 :: bokeh

TABLE of CONTENTS
Interview with Designer Thomas Heatherwick
8
6 Letter from the Editor
17
Cities Around the Globe
are Eagerly Importing a
Dutch Specialty—
Flood Prevention
Björk Talks About
How Nature Inspired Her New High-Tech Album
22
27
Meet the World's Most
Dangerous Instrument:
The Tesla Coil
Bringing Back the Golden Days of Bell Labs
30
28
Sisters with Transistors:
Pioneers of
Electronic Music
What Did the Victorians See in the Stereoscope?
40
37
Do We Need Renaissance
People Any More?
The WWI Dazzle
Camouflage Strategy Was
58 So Ridiculous It Was Genius
64
Nature's Lens:
How Gravity Can Bend
Light Like a Telescope
fall 2022 :: 5

16 :: bokeh

cities
around
the globe
are eagerly
importing
a dutch
speciality—
flood
prevention
The Oosterscheldekering (Eastern Scheldt storm
surge barrier), between the islands Schouwen-Duiveland
and Noord-Beveland, is the largest of the 13 ambitious
Delta Works series of dams and storm surge barriers,
designed to protect the Netherlands from flooding from
the North Sea.
Norfolk, Virginia, was founded on the shores of the
Chesapeake Bay in the 17th century, but when the city
needed new ideas to deal with sinking land and rising seas
it turned to people with even more experience fighting
flooding: the Dutch.
Like the Netherlands, portions of Norfolk have arisen on
wetlands and even creeks buried beneath fill. And similar
to the Netherlands, where two-thirds of the country is
vulnerable to flooding, Norfolk is threatened by rising
tides and intensified storms.
So the city imported expertise, staging the Dutch
Dialogues, a traveling roadshow that is a cross between
a seminar on local hydrology and a design charrette. The
dialogues, initiated by Waggonner & Ball Architects, a
New Orleans firm, and the Royal Dutch Embassy, are just
one example of how a world increasingly imperiled by
water is turning for guidance to a country where there
is no retreat from rising seas.
architects and planners
from the netherlands
are advising coastal
cities worldwide on how
to live with water
Jim Morrison

Bassist John Deacon (left) and drummer Roger Taylor (right) of the band Queen.
Photo taken by Brian May.
Brian May collection.
at and appreciate the value of each image. Not the monetary
value, of course—although there are some very greedy
sellers around who would have you believe that any stereo
card which is more than fifty years of age is worth more
than its weight in gold—but the historical, sociological, or
photographical value of the image, the information it brings,
the details it reveals, its composition along the depth axis,
or the simple stories it often tells about the subject photographed
and, occasionally, about the photographer. There
are still plenty of occasions when what I am looking at baffles
me and I wish I could get more clues from the view itself or
from the faces of the people I discover there. If stereos could
speak! How much more would be understood about these
fascinating images. Since they cannot, we must keep looking
for more clues, more information, more facts; publish more
articles, more books; because from time to time, something
comes up that adds a piece to this gigantic jigsaw puzzle.
Can I experience stereo cards the way the Victorians did? I
don’t think so, but I strive to find some tips in the writings
of the time that can help me better understand their state of
mind, what made them tick, what captured their attention
and grabbed their imagination. I keep trying and will keep
on doing so. And in the meantime, I can only second Oliver
Wendell Holmes’ passionate declaration:
Oh, infinite volumes of poems that I treasure in this
small library of glass and pasteboard!…
56 :: bokeh

movements—Cubism, Futurism, and
Vorticism. In fact, one of the Vorticist
painters, Edward Wadsworth, oversaw
ships being dazzled in Liverpool
during the war.”
Additionally, “you have to remember
that Wilkinson was not only a
seascape painter but also a poster
designer,” Behrens says. “So he had
to work with abstract forms, colors
and shapes.”
Though the British Admiralty probably
didn’t include too many modern
art enthusiasts, the losses from
U-boat attacks were so devastating
that they soon authorized Wilkinson
to set up a camouflage unit at the
Royal Academy in London. He recruited
other artists, who were given
Naval Reserve commissions, and
they got to work.
Wilkinson made models of ships
on a revolving table and then viewed
them through a periscope, using
screens, lights and backgrounds to
see how the dazzle paint schemes
would look at various times of day
and night. He used one of those
models to impress a visitor, King
George V, who stared through the
periscope and guessed that the model
ship was moving south-by-west,
only to be surprised to discover that
it was moving east-by-southeast.
By October 1917, British officials
were sufficiently convinced of dazzle’s
effectiveness that they ordered that all
merchant ships should get the special
paint jobs, according to a 1999 article
by Behrens.
At the request of the U.S. government,
Wilkinson sailed across the
Atlantic in March 1918 and met with
Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, and then helped to set up a
camouflage unit headed by American
impressionist painter Everett Warner.
By the end of the war, more than
2,300 British ships had been decorated
with dazzle camouflage. How successful
dazzle actually was in thwarting
U-boat attacks isn’t clear. As Forbes
explains, a postwar commission concluded
that it probably only provided
a slight advantage.
“When the US Navy adopted
Wilkinson’s scheme for both merchant
and fighting ships there is statistical
evidence to support Wilkinson’s technique,”
Forbes says. A total of 1,256
merchant and fighting ships, were
camouflaged between March 1 and
November 11, 1918. Ninety six ships
over 2,500 tons were sunk; of these
only 18 were camouflaged and all of
them were merchant ships. “None of
the camouflaged fighting ships were
sunk,” he says
“It’s important to remember that
ships didn’t just rely upon dazzle camouflage
for protection from U-boats,”
Behrens explains. “It was used in combination
with tactics such as zig-zagging
and traveling in convoys, in which
the most vulnerable ships were kept in
the center of the formation, surrounded
by faster, more dangerous ships
capable of destroying submarines.”
The synergy of those measures was
“wonderfully effective,” he says.
Dazzle camouflage was resurrected
by the U.S. during World War II, and
was used on the decks of ships as well,
in an effort to confuse enemy aircraft.
Today’s electronic surveillance technology
makes dazzle pretty much
obsolete for protecting ships, but as
Forbes points out, the concept of visually
disruptive patterns is still used
in military uniforms.
62 :: bokeh

fall 2022 :: 63

68 :: bokeh