Dazzle camouflage is a zebra-like pattern used particularly on gunships in the early 1900s to fragment the visual field of enemy sites in combat situations. Although dazzle patterning became obsolete after World War I, Hobbs has mined the potential that such visual deception presents for aesthetic reflection on the dystopian city, in this case the complex and abstract nature of processing information in frenzied urban environments.
In Hobbs’ practice as a whole, and in this case the visual language of his imagined city, the classic dualisms of utopia-dystopia, order-chaos, plan-counterplan are too static to capture the delirious urban dynamic in which he is most interested.
Jacqueline Nurse, 2013.