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Camouflage Cultures: beyond the art of disappearance

2016
Mike Leggett
Book review

Camouflage Cultures: beyond the art of disappearance Ann Elias, Ross Harley, Nicholas Tsoutas (eds) Sydney University Press, Australia. sydney.edu.au/sup 215 pp., b/w col. illus. $US40 ISBN 9781743324257 (pb) reviewed for Leonardo Journal of Art Science and Technology Digital Reviews (LDR)

Contributors of this volume first presented at an international conference and exhibition of contemporary art held at the Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney in 2013. A keynote by Roy R Behrens, artist and pioneer researcher in the field, (whose books were previously reviewed in LDR; June 2010 and Jan 2012), introduced the ubiquity of camouflage, leading the discussion developed over the past decade away from the kind of military applications with which the term is more commonly linked towards other researches. As a milieu for the sciences, arts and humanities, assiduously riffing on terms like mimesis, deception, falsification, disguise, even delusion, enable this collection of stimulating essays derived from the conference to encounter a wide range of practical applications for the term camouflage.