Hanna Rose Shell, "How Not to Be Seen"

Published: Sept. 30, 2009, midnight

b'Hanna Rose Shell, a historian and media artist, is as Assistant Professor in the Program on Science, Technology and Society at MIT. This was a talk about camouflage framed by the question of \\u201chow not to be seen\\u201d\\u2013in film, on film, as film. In the first part, Shell introduced \\u201chow not to be seen\\u201d in terms of the aspiration for, and actualization of concealment in both filmic and natural ecologies through mixed-media practices that simultaneously incorporate and subvert the photographic media of reconnaissance. In the second part, Shell screened and discussed her film-in-progress, called Blind, about the phenomenology of camouflage. Blind as in blindness, and blind as in that actively constructed structure intended for the concealment of a hunter from her game. Shell\\u2019s book Hide and Seek: Camouflage and the Media of Reconnaissance will be published by Zone Books.'