Technicities of Deception: Dazzle Camouflage, Avant-Gardes and Sensory Augmentation in the First World War

Eric White
2017 Modernist Cultures  
This essay identifies a new form of technicity that emerged in the First World War, in which enhancement and distortion effects generated by sensory augmentation technologies could be manipulated for strategic purposes, by a variety of cultural agents. It argues that dazzle camouflage, a technology developed by the British Admiralty in 1917 to delay and confuse attacking U-boats, exemplifies this mediation of everyday life both on and off the battle fronts. Focusing on the London Vorticists,
more » ... also drawing on Futurist precedents, the essay explores how avant-gardes articulated the impact that technicities of augmentation had on modern selfhood. Keywords modernism and technology / modernism and warfare / modernist magazines / Vorticism / Futurism
doi:10.3366/mod.2017.0155 fatcat:qlb3uysh5ncubegglw74t2uo7y