Discuss the three reading selections on the use of camouflage in a multi-paragraph analysis essay, choosing three of the following six elements to incorporate in your analysis:
- writer’s purpose
- writing tone and style
- reader’s goal
- discipline-specific language
- discipline-specific features
- organization
For this writing assignment, your response should be convincing, thoughtful, and detailed, showing various points that support your beliefs on the impact of discipline-specific features on these three readings. Logical evidence that backs up your opinion should be used throughout.
The analysis essay should clearly explain how you think at least three of the following features impact each of the readings from this unit: writer’s purpose, writing tone and style, reader’s goal, discipline-specific language, discipline-specific features, and organization. The first paragraph will offer an interesting introduction of the topic and present your particular view of it. The next three or four paragraphs need to include main points that develop your claim, evidence to support them, analysis explaining how the evidence supports the main point, and transitions (links) connecting one paragraph to the next. Your final paragraph should consist of concluding remarks that effectively offer some memorable thoughts on your topic that push readers’ understanding and challenge them to look at this topic in a new way. The grading rubric below will help you develop your paper.
The Nature of Things: Biomimicry
Biomimicry is a fairly new word for an ancient practice. It means, “imitation of life,” and describes the practice of adopting natural structures and strategies to solve human problems. Through billions of years of evolution, organisms have faced and met the challenges of living on earth, over and over again. The stunning diversity of microbes, animals, and plants means that for every problem, nature has already produced many solutions. Biomimicry views the natural world as a vast laboratory filled with completed experiments that can be adapted to make human activities more efficient. It can be as simple as merely copying a shape, such as building fan blades that look and perform much like whale flippers. It can also be extremely complex, as in engineering filtering systems that pull salt out of seawater based on the chemical and mechanical reactions that operate across cell membranes.
Biomimicry At Work
One of the oldest and most widespread examples of biomimicry is camouflage—the use of objects, colors, or illumination to conceal or confuse an observer. Animals use camouflage to help them eat and avoid being eaten. Humans have long mimicked natural camouflage techniques in hunting and warfare. More recently, camouflage techniques have also been applied to fashion, architecture, and industrial design.
There are many different methods of camouflage. Octopi and lizards match the color and texture of their skins with nearby rocks and vegetation to blend into the background, and manmade hunting gear is painted or woven to do the same thing. Zebras have wild stripes that disrupt their outlines especially when they move in groups, and so did dazzle-painted warships in World War I. (Figure 1.1) Moths and caterpillars are shaped like leaves and twigs to fool predators, while cell phone towers are built like trees to hide their industrial clutter from neighbors. (Figure 1.2) Gazelles and whales have counter-shaded sides that flatten and minimize rounded shapes, as do color-blocked dresses. (Figure 1.3)
Don’t Sink My Battleship!
In the early days of World War I, German submarines devastated the British and American fleets. Submariners would sneak up on a moving ship, watch it just long enough to figure out its speed and direction, and then fire torpedoes into the ship’s path. There was little that surface boats could do to hide from submarines. Although the military was very good at camouflaging troops and tanks on land, ships couldn’t be painted to blend into the background because the colors of the sea and the sky are always changing. But then the British had a startling idea—if they can’t hide them, why not make the ships stand out instead? They decided to paint them in contrasting colors and random patterns, like zebras and giraffes, animals that are easy to spot but hard to track because the patterns they wear break up their outline. The Navy called this disruptive camouflage razzle dazzle: odd, irregular patterns and colors that would confuse enemy gunners and throw off their aim by disguising the shape and motion of their ships.
Applying the razzle dazzle idea took a lot more than handing sailors buckets of paint and letting them have it. First, a wooden model of each ship was built to scale and then handed off to artists who designed and painted individualized patterns. Next, the dazzled model was placed next to a matching one painted plain gray and then the two were placed in front of various simulated backgrounds of water and sky. Designers studied the pair through periscopes to judge how well the camouflage worked and made adjustments as needed. After the pattern was approved, precise plans of the color scheme were drafted and sent to where the actual ship was docked.
Next, using the pattern plan as a guide, the outline of the camouflage was marked in chalk on the ship like a giant paint-by-numbers kit. Finally, the shapes were filled in with paint. If there was time in the rush of war, a ship might be photographed in the harbor and out at sea to assess how well the designed pattern was followed and how effective it was at disguising the vessel’s movements.
Over the course of the two World Wars, several thousand Allied ships were outfitted in dazzle camouflage. It isn’t clear how effective the technique was—the number of sinkings did drop sharply, but that may have been caused by other schemes adopted at the same time, such as grouping ships into large, guarded convoys. Although razzle dazzle was a great morale builder among the crews, it gradually fell out of use as sonar and radar technology replaced optical targeting systems that depended on the human eye.
Razzle Dazzle! Fashion ‘Stars’—in Stripes
Looking for a red carpet transformation? It’s tempting to reach for the go-to tools. After all, a dangerously high heel can make a short frame statuesque, and industrial shapewear can turn a pear into an hourglass. But combine stilettos with a cincher and a swanky affair could end in a visit to the emergency room. Thankfully, this season’s hot trend offers an alternative for literal fashion victims in the form of high-contrast stripes and strategic color-blocking all perfectly placed to minimize, enhance, elongate, and taper.
The fashion world has long used stripes to simply or dramatically change a silhouette. So, what’s the history behind the geometry? This pain-free solution for the shape-conscious started with the nature-proven concept of camouflage. Take zebras as a fashion-forward example. Their alternating, contoured stripes confuse predators making it difficult to tell their exact shape, size, and speed. In essence, stripes save zebras in the wild. In World War I, the British Navy took this same concept to protect their ships at sea by applying biomimicry—innovation inspired by nature. Knowing it would be impossible to cloak a fleet from the enemy, the British navy developed a technique called razzle dazzle—an aesthetic approach aimed at optically altering the shape and size of ships through the use of high-contrast black and white stripes. The trick of the eye, the same natural defense used by the zebra, successfully masked each “dazzle” ship’s size and speed.
While sonar and radar eventually made this technique obsolete, razzle dazzle soon became the craze in British fashion when designers paid homage to the uniquely patterned ships by using bold stripes in garments.
Today’s razzle dazzle uses the same premise to give every body shape the most complimentary accent. Want a taller frame? Ditch the four-inch heel and go for a long pencil skirt with horizontal stripes or an easy maxi gown with alternating light and dark bands.
Playing up curves? Look for alternating light and dark chevrons that taper at the waist.
Tucking the tummy? Toss the shaper and grab a two-tone, color-blocked dress that outlines the silhouette with a dark color while deemphasizing the midriff with a lighter contrasting color.
After a 100 year hiatus, stripes are back in a big way, so use them to your strategic advantage. Whether traversing the urban jungle, or doing battle in the board room, remember to give them the old razzle dazzle.