Speculative camouflage generator

What is it like to build and wear a metaphor?

This tool can be used to create large patterns for wearables based on photographs of specific environments. It generates several designs that use multiscale and shape-disruptive camouflage techniques loosely based on a scientific paper published in 2013. Multiscale patterns employ details at various spatial scales to disguise the wearer, while disruptive patterns aim to distort and interrupt the wearer’s outline using blocks of shapes.

This tool’s patterns are rooted in the “real,” “historical,” and “scientific” but dismiss efficacy to speculate about how (and if?) camouflage can be used as a personal tool for bodied agency. It’s a part of a magical, material, and metaphorical costume that I’m building for myself, as a queer, femme body that lives and moves within a large city. I imagine camouflage as a conceptual and literal technology to hide, obscure, and misrecognize my body in public and corporate space. A screenshot of a fractal noise pattern next to a photograph of the inside of a subway train that was used to generate the pattern

How to use the speculative camouflage generator:

  1. Upload an image of a place
  2. Generate your patterns
  3. Tweak their settings and regenerate
  4. Save the images with their final size
  5. Send the patterns to your favorite print-on-demand fabric site
  6. Fuck with the source code and make your own tool

Generate a pattern

Tip: Use a photograph of a place that avoids large areas of sky or harsh sunlight. For best results, collage together photographs of detail shots from around a specific place into a single image.

Pattern dimensions (inches)

Tip: Best results will have color palettes between 6-15 colors. It may take several attempts to generate, depending on your source image.

Choose patterns

Tip: Pattern generation may take a couple minutes. Debugging logs are available in the console.

Built by Lizz Thabet. View the source code.