#structures but the crew being on the same sort of economic scale and class is so important to why and how they act the way they do

[dykedvonte]

A crazy thing about Mouthwashing is that Pony Express lost communication with one of its freighters for months and didn’t send anyone to check.

A genuinely reputable company, or at the very least a decent one, would have sent someone, something out to check after about two weeks of silence. Two months is when the crew start questioning if they are even being looked for which implies they were already expecting it to take a while cause P.E just doesn’t care.

They don’t care about who they hire. They don’t care about the conditions they place their crew in or how safe the safety measures actually are. They just don’t care, made rules and regulations so they can care less and succeed in getting away with it with how little those ideas are discussed.

[bring-it-all-down]

Capitalism & Racism in Black Sails

In order to properly understand the individual and collective responses to England’s empire in Black Sails, it is necessary to understand capitalism and its relationship to racism. What follows are my thoughts on the relationship between capitalism and racism (focusing on the late 1600s/the development of capitalist England), and how those things relate to the show. It’s a long post, but by no means is it an exhaustive analysis of either capitalism or Black Sails, so I look forward to what others have to say on the subject!

First, what is meant by “capitalism”?

Capitalism describes an economic system in which private businesses own the means of production––the materials and tools used in the production of goods. This system creates distinct classes within society: the bourgeoisie who own the corporations and the proletariat who must work at these corporations and thereby become subservient to the bourgeoisie. 

Explained in Ellen Meiksins Wood’s The Origin of Capitalism, capitalism emerged most specifically in England as a result of the agrarian feudal creation of the landlord-tenant relationship, in which the landlord rented land to the tennant, who was incentivized to produce as many goods as possible. This system led to the complete privatization of land and the creation of wage-laborers who could not produce enough goods to themselves become part of the bourgeoisie. Over time, as these wage-laborers became more numerous, society shifted from being agrarian-centered to revolving around the creation of cities to facilitate the mass production of goods.

How is capitalism tied to racism?

The spread of early capitalism throughout Europe was facilitated by improvements in technology allowing for the mass production of goods from raw materials. Capitalist countries thus turned outward in search of raw goods to power their economies. As Marx explains in Capital:

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterise the dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre (Chapter 31).

Capitalism thus rests on the idea of “primitive accumulation,” that being the initial expropriation of the individual from the land, achieved through feudalism domestically and chattel slavery internationally. Because capitalism demands the constant mass production of goods, it requires increasing volumes of raw goods––sugarcane, cotton, coffee beans, etc.––which are obtained through the extension of colonialist enterprises in order to keep parts of the world in a continuous state of underdevelopment. 

Although pre-capitalist societies had slaves, the advent of capitalism necessitated slavery on a mass scale, produced through the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, in which indigenous populations were wiped out and replaced with slave laborers. This system resulted in complete alienation of labor as white laborers in the “New World” were replaced by the early 1700s with more ‘cost-effective’ enslaved Africans who had no ties to their owners or to the land they worked. As former Trinidadian Prime Minister Eric Williams put it: 

Here, then, is the origin of Negro slavery. The reason was economic, not racial; it had to do not with the color of the laborer, but the cheapness of the labor. [The planter] would have gone to the moon, if necessary, for labor. Africa was nearer than the moon, nearer too than the more populous countries of India and China. But their turn would soon come” (14).

Racism, then, is indistinguishable from the power structures of capitalism. The desire of the bourgeoisie to increase their capital led to the creation of the slave trade in order to accumulate mass volumes of raw goods so their proletariat workers could transform them into goods to then be sold back to the workers for profit. 

This system thus creates two types of exploitation: the exploitation of the enslaved people and colonized lands, as well as the exploitation of the domestic working class. The need to keep this system in place demanded capitalist societies craft the false belief in white supremacy in order to justify the enslavement of Africans, Indians, and various Indigenous peoples in Asia and Latin America.

So, how does piracy come into the picture?

In the mid-late 1600s, England began its industrial revolution, propelling the island to increase its Atlantic trade. This desire to trade created a new merchant class, expanded the number of laborers in American colonies, and launched England into various wars with competing European powers. In Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, Marcus Rediker describes the social conditions of this era thusly:

By 1716, big planters drove armies of servants and slaves as they expanded their power from their own lands to colonial and finally national legislatures. Atlantic empires mobilized labor power on a new and unprecedented scale, largely through the strategic use of violence––the violence of land seizure, of expropriating agrarian workers, of the Middle Passage, of exploitation through labor discipline, and of punishment (often in the form of death) against those who dared resist the colonial order of things. By all accounts, by 1713, the Atlantic economy had reached a new stage of maturity, stability, and profitability. The growing riches of the few depended on the growing misery of the many.

Piracy emerged from this poverty in England and in its colonies, as poor people who knew how to sail figured they had little to lose and much to gain in turning to piracy. Moreover, piracy offered an alternative to the oppressive nature of living under England’s empire. Pirate ships “limited the authority of the captain, resisted many of the practices of capitalist merchant shipping industry, and maintained a multicultural, multiracial, and multinational social order.” On these ships, pirates learned “the importance of equality…[their] core values were collectivism, anti-authoritarianism, and egalitarianism, all of which were summarized in the sentence frequently uttered by rebellious sailors: “they were one & all resolved to stand by one another.” In Marxist terms, pirates retained control over the means of production and their labor, producing a more egalitarian division of profit in which all received the same share.

The Golden Age of Piracy, then, emerged in response to England’s adoption of capitalism. Despite the threat of death, exploited workers turned to piracy out of desperation and the quest for securing immediate wealth. Although piracy was often violent, it nonetheless embodied a system of labor in stark contrast to that of capitalism, based not on unequal acquisition of goods but on the fundamental equality of human beings.

How does this capitalist context enrich our understanding of Black Sails?

England’s capitalist-driven empire provides the system under which all of our characters struggle and thus informs their every decision. The characters’ backstories we are given all pertain to their desire to either escape from capitalism or assimilate with it. As this post is quite lengthy, I won’t go into detail about every single character, only the ones who most illustrate the manner in which capitalism operates.

First, James Flint’s backstory is not simply that of a man who experienced homophobia and wants revenge for it. We learn of him that his father was a carpenter and he was raised by his grandfather in Padstow, a working-class fishing town in north Cornwall. Because of this, he was barred from receiving a formal education and likely joined the navy because it offered him the opportunity for some sort of upward mobility, though it’s clear in his interactions with his peers that they will never see him as an equal due to his lower-class status. The manner in which James’s peers treat him very likely plays a role in his decision to support Thomas’s plan for Nassau. Despite the plan still being colonialist, it did seek to undermine a key component of capitalism: the dehumanization of the working force. This dehumanization is a fundamental element of capitalism (and this empire) because if laborers believe they have inherent worth, they are more likely to challenge the bourgeoisie. Thus, James’s exile from England was not because he was gay, but because he sought to undercut the foundations of England’s wealth, a choice driven by his love for Thomas and his own relationship to capitalism.

Connected to Flint’s backstory is Billy’s, as it also involves the navy. From the mid-1600s to the early 1800s, Britain relied on the practice of impressment––forcing people to serve in the navy––to advance its colonial aims. Billy’s parents were levellers, people who opposed impressment. As punishment for this, Billy was taken as a child and forced into “press gangs” and served in the Navy for three years as a bonded laborer (the naval equivalent of debtors’ prison) until his ship was captured by Flint and he was given the opportunity to join the crew after killing his captor. Like Flint, then, Billy became a pirate as a direct result of the violence done to him by capitalist-imperialist England.

Likewise, Jack became a pirate as a consequence of English capitalist industrialization. His family had for generations owned a tailoring business, but it was driven out of business by the creation of a massive textile mill. After his father died, Jack was forced to assume responsibility for his father’s debts, which he would work off as an indentured servant at the very textile mill responsible for the debt. Jack, then, turns to piracy to escape capitalism.

To understand the backstories of Flint, Billy, and Jack, you must understand the process by which England assumed a capitalist economy and how that shift from feudalism to capitalism affected both domestic and international practices in the early 1700s. The introduction of distinct classes based on relationships to labor mandated strict inequality and the valuation of mass production at the expense of individual lives.

How does Black Sails depict the relationship between racism and capitalism?

The most obvious answer here is the show’s involvement of Madi and the Maroons, who exist solely as a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Because this is already a lengthy post, I would like to set Madi aside in order to talk about Max, who I think offers a less overt critique of what Cedric Robinson calls “racial capitalism.”

Max, rather than seeking to run from capitalism, wants to become a member of the bourgeoisie. Her enslavement is, of course, the result of French colonialism in the Caribbean, but rather than recoil from civilization, her enslavement propels her to want to join it. As she tells Anne:

“When I was very small, I would sneak out of the slave quarters at night to the main house. I would stand outside the window to the parlor. I would stand amongst the heat and the bugs and the filth on my toes to see inside. Inside that house was a little girl my age… With the most beautiful skin. I watched her dance while her father played music and her mother sewed. I watched her read and eat and sing and sleep, kept safe and warm and clean by her father. My father. The things it took to make that room possible, they were awful things. But inside that room was peace. That is what home is to me” (3.3).

She reiterates this understanding of society to Marion Guthrie when she states that “progress cannot begin and suffering will not end until someone has the courage to go out into the woods and drown the damned cat” (4.07). While she recognizes the evils of civilization, she also believes that it offers comforts for the select few, and she wants to be one among the few. 

Max, indeed, is successful in assimilating into capitalist society. She works her way out of sex work until she owns most of Nassau, not once but twice. This achievement initially seems like a massive success and proof in the viability of Max’s methods, but in subtle ways, the show demonstrates that assimilation is not liberation.

Because, as Ibram X. Kendi stated, “The life of racism cannot be separated from the life of capitalism,” Max’s attempts to assimilate come with the betrayal of the rest of the enslaved people. Although she herself refuses to use slave labor, her treaty with Mrs. Guthrie, Silver, and the Maroons requires the Maroons to return escaped Black people into slavery. Moreover, she has won herself power in a system that refuses to recognize her presence, forcing her to pretend that Featherstone is the real governor of Nassau. 

Further, her assimilation into the capitalist system alienates her from other Black people. The two characters with whom she is most closely associated with are Anne and Eleanor, white women whose whiteness affords them a certain level of protection not offered to Max. She never interacts with Madi or any of Madi’s people and she therefore cannot comprehend any other path but assimilation. 

For all of Max’s efforts to learn from Eleanor and do better than Eleanor in running Nassau, she ends up in virtually the same place as Eleanor, but even more hidden. The Guthrie family still holds financial control of Nassau, Woodes Rogers still looms in the distance, and though piracy exists, it is even less acceptable. Thus, while Max is often credited as the person who most “sees life as it is,” her alienation under capitalism prevents her from seeing life “as it should be.”

Conclusion

As capitalism emerged as the dominant economic and political system beginning in the early 1700s, it came to define all aspects of global society, down to the very relationships people had with each other. It is impossible, then, to truly understand the motivations of anyone in the show without discussing their relationship to capitalism. This is by no means an exhaustive account of Black Sails’ commentary on capitalism and racism (I didn’t even mention Vane’s conversation with the Spanish soldier), but it hopefully underscores the idea that knowledge of capitalism (and therefore imperialism) is essential for fully comprehending the show.

[pluienoir]

Pluie/Noir Interscapes 02 “Interior Design”

Sound Mixed and Compiled by Rubi Visual Interpretation by David Surman

Soundcloud Link: https://soundcloud.com/pluie-noir/pluienoirinterscapes02

Welcome to the new Pluie/Noir podcast series, Interscapes. 8 years after our debut we decided to press the reboot button and return to our roots. With a new format and back to a regular monthly schedule, Pluie/Noir Interscapes will feature audio collages, mixes, live interviews and live recordings from P/N artists, friends, and other collectives we admire.

Because less is more, instead of the usual triptych format, this series will feature one single visual interpretation of the music by a graphic artist. The artwork will be available to purchase in poster format on our rebooted Bandcamp page very soon, with cassettes or CD-r of the mixes as a bonus.

World events have taken the series out of its planned monthly schedule, but priority was on the safety and functional structure of the private lives of everyone involved in the project during these unprecedented times. 

For Interscapes 02 we welcome Rubi, a versatile german artist based in Myanmar, with a visual interpretation by english painter David Surman,

— Interview: Rubi

Hi Christina, welcome to the P/N Interscapes series. How have you been?

Hi there, and thank you so much for having me on your wonderful series! <3 I’m good, I’m enjoying what I can from the comfort of my own home together with my little kitty, currently working online and otherwise painting and reading a lot or watching movies!

Why did you move to Southeast Asia? Was it mere chance or a long-term goal?

A little bit of both, but I’d say it was intentional :) I moved here initially only for a short-term gig of three months early 2017 which I found really quite randomly but was very intrigued by. And honestly, I just liked it so much that I felt like I needed to come back and spend more time! I moved back to Yangon, Myanmar in August 2018 and have been here since, and I deeply love it – there’s a different energy in the air in Southeast Asia, people are kind and positive everywhere around you and there is still so much space on an economic and artistic level that it’s a very fulfilling place to be!

Your endeavours seem pretty vast. What did you study, what do you do for a living, and how do you entangle it with music?

Ha, I’m an economist and data scientist during the day. I’ve always been listening to and surrounding myself with music, but actually got deeper into DJing when I started my PhD in Barcelona in 2013 – I just felt like at the end of a long, mentally draining day I needed to use a very different part of my brain to really relax and let go, and getting creative with the music perfectly hit the spot. I’m currently teaching at a Liberal Arts and Sciences Institute here in Myanmar, which has the goal of bringing quality education to students from different walks of life, particularly those from ethnic minorities and less privileged backgrounds. 

I finally got to combine my two worlds by teaching a class in music psychology this term, where we are exploring the role of music in everyone’s life from early childhood, how it is used as a social identifier and its connection to politics and conflict. My students are in their early 20s, and I’ve put them on the guestlist for several of the club nights I’ve organized here and they think it’s the coolest thing ever to see their professor behind the decks haha!

How is the audio-visual arts scene in Myanmar and the surrounding Nations? Are you helping activate it somehow and what are you working on nowadays?

I’d say the scene particularly in this part of Asia is at an early stage compared to Europe, but driven by a lot of passion and daring, forward-thinking people. In most of the major cities, you’ll find a beautiful venue and a small dedicated crew of people behind it - some of my favourite places I’ve played at in the area are Savage and Observatory in Vietnam, the Resonant crew at B1 in Taipei and Club Kowloon in Hong Kong. Also, the early-stage vibe brings the liberating attitude that as a DJ it’s really just about making people dance, and there’s no ego yet about the tracks you play or how you achieve this – if you can manage a dance floor, you get a stamp of approval. 

Myanmar I’d say is the youngest scene by yet another margin, particularly because of its very recent coming-out of a military dictatorship. There’s a small number of local DJs and very few venues that dare to program (non-EDM) electronic music, and I was lucky to get a residency in my favourite club in town within the first month of arriving! I started my Out Of Sight events here, a monthly series which gained a very regular following and is the only one with international bookings in the whole country. Upon coming here, I didn’t really think I’d get to start another series of my own, especially inviting over so many DJ friends to come to visit and also contribute and explore the country while they’re here. Honestly, part of my joy in doing this has purely been getting inspired myself by seeing people play, bringing together a community of friends to dance through the night and just have a really great time. 

It’s been a very gratifying journey, not least because it received appreciation from people in town – many of the local DJs became loyal followers and very excited to see artists from different countries play here in Yangon. Over the past couple of months, I’ve had Adam Collins here, Exos (twice!), TC80, Avos & Moses Mawila, Max Davis and many more. So yes, I feel like I’ve made a small contribution to the scene in one particular place – and honestly, there is still so much space here for people doing things that it’s very fun and easy to create something impactful!

Tell us more about "Interior Design": How, why, when?

I’ve recorded this podcast at home in Yangon, on a chill midweek evening when I felt a little spark of inspiration. I honestly take forever to record podcasts, as you already know from me submitting this so late :) I get deeply into overthinking mode and since I don’t publish many mixes I want them to have a specific theme and vision behind instead of just putting tracks together – which usually ends up with me procrastinating for months until it finally clicks and I know exactly what I want to do. There are quite a few tempo changes inside as I tried to create an arch from very slow ambient tracks to something I’d play in the middle of a night and then back down again. But somehow all of the tracks I put feel deeply me and representative of the style I like, so I identify with it. 

The name was a last-minute hunch, but seemed fitting with the current phase of everyone spending time inside their homes and through this discovering maybe not just their furniture but also the building blocks of their inside world :)

And music-making? Is it something you want to explore?

I’ve actually gotten into playing acoustic music here with friends in recent months, and that’s been a really fun journey! I have a bunch of instruments at my home, and hosting small jam sessions has been one of my favourite pastimes. All of them are much more talented and experienced than me but have graciously taken me in so I’m constantly learning a lot. 

On the electronic music side, I feel most compelled by making more experimental and ambient things as it feels like there is a larger range of freedom for exploration. I’ve been sampling some of the sounds in my surroundings for a while as the hustle and bustle here sounds so different from what I’m used to in Europe, so we’ll see what comes out of it!

Short, medium and long term goals?

Honestly, I’m a pretty chill person, so my overall goal in life is just to spend my time in an interesting and creative way, surround myself with people I love and somehow leave a positive trace with what I do. If I manage to keep combining all of these things I’ll consider myself a lucky and successful human!

— Interview: David Surman

Hi David, such a pleasure to have you at P/N. How are you, all things considered?

Thank you for asking, I’m very good right now. The pandemic has shifted my reality in all sorts of unexpected ways. I had coronavirus after taking a trip to Madrid, then New York. I came back to London and got sick immediately. I’m so glad to have fully recovered. I’m enjoying the empty London.

Have you lived abroad and explored different artistic fields apart from painting, or has it always been about England and canvases?

I was introduced to painting when I was a teenager by an artist Rob Fairley who my dad knew. I had always drawn a lot, but I didn’t consider being a painter until much later. I actually trained to be an animation film director, which seems so ridiculous to me now. I thought of it as a pragmatic choice -- the kind of profession which is somewhere between a reliable job and artistic freedom. Little did I know that hand-drawn animation would all but disappear. 

I absolutely loved good quality animation, films like Akira and Ghost in the Shell, and the Studio Ghibli films. I wanted to make them, and I also wanted to disappear into them. I started seriously painting again in my early 30s after a decade of working in animation and videogames in the UK and Australia. The timing has been perfect for me, as I started to paint really when I was ready. Australia changed my work, it made me think about colour and light and scale. I made films and animations and games there with my partner Ian Gouldstone before we came back to the UK and I started to paint full time around 2013.

I'd discovered your work through Sound Of Vast's "5th Anniversary Series". It featured a series of paintings from your "Paintings for the Cat Dimension" exhibition/installation. What was it about?

That was such a wonderful collaboration, and the team at Sound of Vast are brilliant. My exhibition was a series of 12 paintings of the same cat motif, a mother with two kittens, interpreted in 12 different ways. I wanted to make a statement on what it means to paint in the post-internet era, without giving in to the impulse to simply paint or reproduce imagery directly from online culture. So I created a cat motif in response to the prevalence of cats online from the beginning. The real statement though was the stylistic shifting around. I wanted to say “we are playing with identity all the time, why should an artist be an authentic singular identity?” I wanted to show that an artist can wear many masks, and they’re all authentic in representing artistic action.  

Do you consider the internet, social media and contemporary sub-cultures the biggest influences of your work?

I don’t believe you get to choose your influences so much in art. By the time you’re 8 years old or so, your plastic little brain has been shaped by certain formative things. For me, there are two fascinations, first the natural world, which nourishes the animal side of me. The second is the artificial human world of images, electronic media, videogames, movies, art. 

As much as I would like to be integrated into nature like a romantic dreamer I firmly believe humans are stuck outside of nature, so we have to make a new nature for ourselves to comfort and distract ourselves. This is art, and it takes many shapes, from youtube to painting to music. I see all these things as fundamentally the same, art is doing something with love. I see a lot of love in internet cultural activity and so it influences me. Though I have no idea how visible all this is in the work.

Your work isn't shy of colour or texture. Is this rooted in your fascination for animation?

When you learn to animate you become totally dedicated to line. It’s through moving lines that things come to life. Drawing is emphasised more than painting, and so colour and surface are less emphasised. When I came back to painting I really savoured the ability to subtly control the colour of the image and also the final quality of the paint. I go for strong colour because of various factors. You’re certainly right about animation being an influence, I think the colours of well-made cel painted animations are astounding. Particularly in good quality anime feature films of the 80s and 90s. 

My approach is also calculated, I am interested in having an impact followed by a slowly shifting understanding, and you need to push colour to achieve that. Also as I have gotten older and become more and more conscious of art history I feel a sort of obligation to have courage with colour and put out my ideas in a clear way.

Do you listen to music while painting? Does music have an impact on you while you paint?

I absolutely listen to music when I paint, and I am totally repetitive in my choices. I listen to David Bowie’s discography on repeat, and Kate Bush too. If I need to go to a particular mindset I will listen to Bach, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Glass. Bowie and Bush are just always there, timeless, every aspect of it is totally known and listening to them while painting just greases everything along nicely. I would like to be a curious listener and search for different music, but I think I’ve become extremely focused on the experiences of the eye, and perhaps not so much the other senses.  

"Raucous Bird" is your visual interpretation of Rubi's podcast. Why did you choose this particular work?

Listening to Rubi’s work I was thinking a lot about the space of music, and the way we lose a sense of direction. It becomes spatial, but there isn’t necessarily a top or bottom. This is very different from visual art, which relies a lot on a structure of top, bottom, and so on. It made me think of the paintings of cockatoos I’ve made, who I saw often in Australia, playing fun games in the trees. They appear weightless and live to enjoy the space and their own free bodily movement. For me, the music creates a wonderful association with this memory.

Short, medium and long term goals?

To make exciting paintings that have an impact, and to bring the work to new places. That’s the priority for me at any given time. Thanks so much for asking such great questions. 

— Links:

https://soundcloud.com/itsmerubi https://www.davidsurman.com

W: https://pluienoir.tumblr.com M: info (at) pluienoir.com

[hudsonespie]

What Does The Future Hold For Shipping?

Remi Eriksen, Group President, and CEO DNV GL discussed some of the upcoming developments in the maritime world in his speech at the Danish Maritime Technology Conference. Read his lightly edited version of these remarks:

Digitalization and de-carbonization are watchwords for the coming decade, and I will try to explain how the maritime industry can navigate these developments to its best advantage. I will use three examples to illustrate how shipping can advance – to become safer, more efficient and at the same time reduce its environmental footprint.

The main question for all of us is: What does the future hold for shipping?

Image Credits: dnvgl.com

Obviously, the future is notoriously hard to predict and a straight answer is far from easy to give.

What I do know is that shipping will continue to play an important part of the world economy for decades to come. But the industry itself, the vessels, the infrastructure, and the systems that connect them could change substantially. We can of course not ignore the current market situation and the structural effect this might have. But, today is not an arena for fear and pessimism. This is an arena for curiosity, innovation and opportunity.

LNG as a marine fuel

Today shipping plays an integral part in the global economy and moves more than 80 percent of world trade by volume. Not only does shipping move the majority share of world trade, but it also does so while emitting the least amount of greenhouse gasses per transported unit.

In the recent COP21 agreement, shipping was in fact left out. Approximately 2.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions can be accounted for shipping, and the industry will not be left alone. It will have to do its bit. A key question is, therefore: How can shipping reduce its environmental footprint, improve cost-effectiveness while at the same time remain the preferred mode of transportation of goods?

One answer is alternative fuels. Depending on fuel type, greenhouse gas emissions, NOX, SOX, and local particle emissions can be significantly reduced – if we want. The technologies are there. Today the leading alternative fuel for ships is LNG. LNG exists in abundance and is becoming increasingly available as infrastructure continues to be built. Right now – ferries and offshore vessels make up the majority of the LNG fuelled ships in operation, but container vessels and oil and chemical tankers are catching up.

Image Credits: dnvgl.com

Let’s take a closer look at LNG fueled container vessels. Together with industry partners, we have investigated the possibility of using a combined gas and steam turbine system (COGAS) to power an ultra-large container vessel.

The project called PERFECt – Piston Engine Room Free Efficient Containership – has developed an LNG-fuelled concept vessel that is electrically driven. PERFECt has a propulsion concept that has the potential to offer a more efficient, more flexible and greener box ship than current 20,000 TEU diesel-engine-driven container vessels.

This new design combines the exceptional volumetric efficiency of membrane containment technology with flexible electric propulsion to save cargo space and improve fuel efficiency compared to a conventional design. Two 11,000 m³ LNG fuel tanks are located below the deckhouse, giving the vessel enough fuel capacity for an Asia/Europe round trip. With the gas and steam turbines integrated at deck level within the same deck house as the tanks, space normally occupied by the conventional engine room can be used to increase cargo capacity significantly. Separating electric power generation from electric propulsion allows the electric power plant to be moved away from the main propulsion system, giving a great deal of flexibility. In fact, an engine room is not needed anymore. The three electric main motors, which are arranged on one common shaft, can be run fully independently of each other providing increased reliability and safety.

The first phase of the project performed by GTT, CMA Ships and DNV GL showed that the project is technically and economically viable. We are now in the second phase of the project and we have been joined by ABB, the Caterpillar company Solar Turbines, and OMT. We will look at optimizing the COGAS system, using the cooling capacity of the LNG, and further optimization of the hull lines to attain greater efficiency and increased cargo capacity.

3D printing

The next potential game-changer in shipping is additive manufacturing or 3D printing. Not only can additive manufacturing result in new designs for more efficient machinery components, it could also allow spare parts to be produced locally in various ports around the world. This would improve responsiveness to market demands, shorten the time for repairs and contribute to more efficient ship operations.

The technology is already being used for rapid prototyping, but it is now gradually being integrated into existing manufacturing infrastructure, for example in the automotive and aircraft manufacturing industries. It has fewer design restrictions compared to conventional manufacturing processes, it offers possibilities for novel designs, including lightweight products, and has the potential to shorten manufacturing time significantly.

Image Credits: dnvgl.com

The US Navy has started testing the technology onboard ships, to evaluate the potential of producing spare parts. However, this requires trained personnel on board, and the printer will be subject to the motions of the vessel, potentially affecting product quality.

So, there are some issues that need to be thought through. Qualification and certification may present significant challenges because of the potential for variability in specified properties. The traditional qualification methods of repeated testing of an end product produced from a centralized facility will not be sufficient. The distributed nature of additive manufacturing means that the product characteristics determined for one location may be entirely different from another location – owing to software and hardware differences, or other factors.

An additional or ‘second-order’ downside of additive manufacturing for shipping is that the distributed production of manufactured goods may reduce the overall demand for shipping of goods.

Digitalization and autonomous shipping

The shipping industry will have to continue innovating to keep up with the increasing expectations from end-users, charterers, regulators and society at large. This is not just about the technology itself, but also about how successful we are in scaling it to the point where it delivers real financial, environmental and societal benefits.

On that note – we should all keep an eye on all the possibilities that digitalization of shipping holds. Ships are becoming sophisticated sensor hubs and data generators, and advances in satellite communications and antenna technology are improving ship connectivity. This allows for a massive increase in the volumes of data transferred between ship and shore – at ever-lower cost.

Digitalization of information flows will spur the automation of existing processes and functions and positively impact safety and environmental performance. The fleet of the future will continually communicate with its managers and perhaps even with a “traffic control” system that is monitoring vessel positions, manoeuvres and speeds.

Image Credits: dnvgl.com

Fleet managers will be able to analyze this data, enabling them to advise the captain and crew on navigation, weather patterns, fuel consumption, and port arrival. This will help to reduce the risks of human error leading to accidents, increase cost efficiency, and help to improve environmental performance. Some of these data will also be shared. Ports will use the data to help them plan and optimize loading and unloading. Classification societies will analyze the data to check on the status of machinery and hull, letting the owners and operators know when a survey is required based on the condition of the systems, helping them to reduce downtime and avoid unnecessary maintenance.

Onshore, new cloud technologies, such as big data platforms and digital twin technologies will have a dramatic effect on how the industry manages information, and how vessels and their components are designed, built, and operated – all of which will see new digital business models emerging.

A potential game changer that may spring out of the progress within information and communication technology is the advent of unmanned vessels. Unmanned vessels can either be remotely operated from shore, on autopilot or be completely autonomous. Many steps will be needed before fully unmanned ships can become a reality. However; some sort of autonomy is also relevant to manned ships, and it would greatly increase safety through smart decision support.

In order to increase this autonomy, situational awareness needs to be improved dramatically. When it comes to autonomous equipment, it’s predicted that equipment like Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS), GPS, RADARS, CAMERAS and LIDARS (light detection and ranging) will be utilized to create situational awareness around the vessel. These are all systems and sensors which are available on the market today.

We have been researching topics around autonomous and remotely operated vessels for several years now in close cooperation with academia and industry partners. Our goal is to develop classification requirements and assurance principles that will allow the safe introduction of this technology in the maritime industry.

One example is the Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Application Initiative – better known as AAWA. Our focus in this project is to develop class requirements and principles for assurance of safety and performance. A general principle for new technology solutions to be introduced, is that it must be “as safe as, or safer than” existing solutions. At DNV GL we are in the process of forming the framework that will demonstrate this for various degrees of autonomy. Key in this process will be to undertake comprehensive simulations, HIL testing, and physical trials.

Closing

The key drivers for the coming decade are decarbonisation and digitalisation and offer opportunities for the maritime industry to become safer, more efficient while at the same time reducing its environmental footprint. At DNV GL we are excited to be a part of this transformation. We will continue to work with stakeholders across the maritime world to realize the potential of our industry – so that the outlook for shipping tomorrow will be brighter than today.

Technology Outlook 2025

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Reference: dnvgl.com

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