Lawrence Wallen - Böcker

The Model as Performance investigates the history and development of the scale model from the Renaissance to the present from a scenographic perspective and a performative paradigm that explores what the model can do and how it is used in theatre and architecture. It provides a comprehensive historical context and theoretical framework for theatre scholars, scenographers, artists and architects interested in the model’s reality-producing capacity and its recent emergence in contemporary art practice and exhibition. For the undergraduate student, it provides a historical survey of the model, and to the postgraduate student, it opens up a new methodological approach. Introducing a typology of the scale model beyond the iterative and the representative model, the authors identify the autonomous model as a provocative construction between past and present, idea and reality that challenges and redefines the relationship between object, viewer and environment. Case studies include Brunelleschi’s dome models and Bel Geddes’ Futurama, Mies van der Rohe’s mock ups and Zumthor’s atmospheric models, Anna Viebrock’s life size boxes and Herzog & de Meuron’s miniature styrofoam exhibits.The Model as Performance was shortlisted for the best Performance Design & Scenography Publication Award at the Prague Quadrennial (PQ) 2019.

What is the impact of virtual models and realms in contemporary theatre, art and architecture?This volume explores the evolution of virtual models, their transformative spatial potential, and their capacity for world-making using a range of case studies drawn from global contemporary theatre, art and architecture practice.It draws upon a rich array of contemporary examples, including the Japanese artist collective Dumb Type, Chinese artist Lu Yang, US­-Iranian artist Morehshin Allahyari, Björk, and the UK research agency Forensic Architecture. In parallel, a historical overview focused on the formative years of digital society provides context to the rapid development of virtual technologies, including the work of architecture collectives Superstudio and Archigram and seminal art, performance and technology collaborations from 1960s New York onward, enabled by institutions such as MoMA and Bell Labs. Behind this inquiry is a historical and theoretical positioning of the immaterial and its relationship to the material. Discussing emerging forms of expanded reality (XR) as devices in the theoretical and cultural framework of the virtual model, this study reveals the processes made visible in exhibitions, installations and performances while focusing on overlapping spaces, narratives and actors as they contribute to constructing virtual worlds. Virtual Models in Theatre, Art and Architecture: Making Worlds reframes the virtual model as dispositif at the interface of the real, the fictional and the virtual, encouraging the reader to critically consider how new technologies open new spaces for knowledge creation and creative expression.