The Model as Performance

Staging Space in Theatre and Architecture

Thea Brejzek, Lawrence Wallen, Joslin McKinney, Scott Palmer, Stephen A. Di Benedetto

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781474271394
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Theatergeschichte & -kritik

The Model as Performance investigates the history and development of the scale model from the Renaissance to the present. Employing a scenographic perspective and a performative paradigm, it explores what the model can do and how it is used in theatre and architecture. The volume 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. 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. The Model as Performance was shortlisted for the best Performance Design & Scenography Publication Award at the Prague Quadrennial (PQ) 2019.

1

The Model as Object and Idea

The model as object and idea plays a prime role in the design processes of architecture and theatre. In professional practice as much as in design studio education, the model is essential to the generation and representation of ideas. Numerous models are typically produced during a design process, many of them discarded immediately, others kept, and the ideas expressed within them integrated at a later stage. Models are discussed here as epistemic tools or instruments that consistently produce and communicate knowledge as concept and form progress incrementally and converge in the final product. It will be shown that model-making and modelling processes comprise fundamental research practices to explore form, extend material properties or speculate on future developments and uses in the disciplines. But there is also another dimension to the model, linked to invention and imagination more than to the pragmatic needs of the scenographer and architect in that models are physical and conceptual instruments of the cosmopoietic (world-making) act – they are able to comprise entire worlds. This ultimately performative and reality-constructing dimension of the model, and with it the observation of architectural and scenographic models throughout history that have been conceptualized as singular artefacts, demands the development and introduction of a new taxonomy of the model at this stage of the project. Beyond the categories of the developmental (iterative) and the final (representative) model, this project proposes the autonomous model beyond original and copy. Before close readings of the model in all its aspects in the following fully help to unfold its significance in the advancement of technologies and the questioning of conventionalized modes of what a building can be and what a stage can be throughout the histories of theatre and architecture, the model’s emergence and its general history must be traced and its diverse manifestations contextualized. The model’s history is sketchy and extant models are scarce, in theatre even more so than in architecture. In architecture, the model came to prominence with the exploration of perspective and its canonized use in the Renaissance, and its first use in theatre dates from the same era when it became necessary to construct a scaled model to test the size, construction and perspective of the actual set.

The vast majority of models discussed in the brief historical overview that closes this chapter are final, representative models. Iterative models are rarely collected and preserved, and if, they will typically be shown in a designer personalities retrospective to illustrate their design process in detail. The representative and autonomous models, often appearing as hybrids between the two, are the subjects of close readings in the following chapters and are only mentioned in passing here with the exception of the emergence of the singular, revolutionary object in architecture, theatre and sculpture in the 1920s in a prefiguration of contemporary autonomous models that operate both in and between the genres.

Staging space: The autonomous model

Alongside plans and drawings, models are principal instruments in the design and communication processes of theatre and architecture. Design models clarify and explain spatial configurations and relations, placing the building or set design in its scalar and topographical context. Thus, models of built structures and set designs alike always lay a claim to something, in that they propose a reality by their sheer object status. In turn, they typically refer to something prior – to another model, plan, drawing, idea or another artefact to be constructed in the future at a congruent or differing scale. Different types have specific functions, and no one model can aspire to a complete representation of any conceptual design process. Models can be speculative, projective or retrospective, as well as realistic, experimental or pragmatic. They might possess a material analogy to their future artefact, or may be constructed to test structural, textual and haptic properties of materials.

In the design processes of scenography and architecture, the physical scale model appears in two distinct phases: first, in conceptual development, where it is used to generate form, resolve issues of materiality and physically manifest theoretical and programmatic ideas, and second, in model-making where a non-linear dialogue between emerging artefact and emerging idea in an iterative and incremental method of continual refinement takes place. The result of this latter phase is referred to as an iterative model. In a later, more stable phase, the model is constructed and used to represent a finalized design, either to communicate a proposed scheme or to exhibit an existing structure. Here, a dialogue occurs between the model and what it represents in the past or future. This is referred to as a representative model. In both cases, the scale model constructs and projects its reality while anticipating a reality beyond. While iterative models might not be constructed to scale and will primarily serve material and formal exploration, representative models are usually constructed at scale. Different scales allow for different levels of reduction or detail, and models are thus built in various scales to test a wide range of phenomena and conditions. Modelling not only carves out possibilities and predicts spatial outcomes relating to the site and its context, but makes them visible.

However, visual models are not ‘truthful’ representations of present or future states but are subject to ideology and intent, so that their reading is dependent on visual trends, histories, cultures and diverse perceptual conventions. Ideologies and intents are inscribed into the model and determine its scale, its aesthetics, materials and construction. They are responsible for the model’s emphasis on specific aspects and the reduction or omission of others. As physical communication media, models are highly context-dependent, and this extends to the object’s live performance in any final design presentation to colleagues or clients. The model presentation may well determine whether a project will be built, and presentations today are typically rehearsed and scripted¹ with the careful staging of setting and lighting in the presentation space. Diverse narratives that describe the model to different audiences are crucial, and the ‘performance’ of the model must be seamless to engender confidence in the design’s future workability. Here then is a performative act in which the presenter brings the model’s semantic complexities (‘model of’ and ‘model for’) into live relation with audience and environment. In the performative space that emerges from the interaction between environment (model), presenter and audience, time is extended from the present towards a future of construction, realization and inhabitation of the set or building. During design and presentation, figurines are typically used to simulate movement and behaviour in the scaled-down model-world, and for that exquisite moment, it exists in its space and time, presenting an alternate reality: the reality of the model.

The core difference between theatre and architecture models lies not in their construction but the reality of their practices. While set design models must allow for lighting and set changes in working towards a live performance that happens in time, architectural models are static representations for presentation, or else have been built specifically for exhibition. The architectural model may not be an interior or spatial model and may focus exclusively on the architectural object. The theatre model in contrast always includes space and time as central, whereas in architecture it is the physical object that is of primary concern.

The word ‘model’, first used in the Italian Renaissance as modello, from the Latin modulus, an architectural ‘measure’, is highly equivocal in its use in architecture, theatre, philosophy and science. This is because the model is always both idea and object, and is seen in all these contexts as the physical, virtual or theoretical representation of an object, behaviour or a set of relations. The general function of models is to link theoretical concepts with practical applications by providing a tactile environment and specific semantic context to develop theories, extend hypotheses or predict developments. Model theory, as a sub-discipline of mathematical logic and philosophy, offers definitions and frameworks that help to explain functions and attributes of models in a way that is valid not only for mathematical models, and by extension for scientific models, but also for stage set and architectural models in view of their performativity and agency, as proposed in this study.

Marx W. Wartofsky, philosopher and model theorist, posits that the primary task of models is to enable the future. For Wartofsky, models are purposeful ‘modes of action’ and ‘experimental probes’ that require being ‘performed’ rather than merely devised (Wartofsky 1979: 148). As teleological instruments, they are creative rather than conservative and able to communicate beyond what they comprise.

The argument here is that models are more than abstract ideas. They are technological means for conceptual exploration leading to experimentation. But an experiment is something that has to be performed and not merely conceived to be useful. In this sense, models are experimental probes, essential parts of the human technique for confronting the future – but not as a passive encounter with something already formed. Rather, in a unique way in which human action is creative, such an encounter shapes the future. Thus, we may suggest, that models constitute the distinctive technology of purpose. (Wartofsky 1979: 148)

Herbert Stachowiak, in his basic research into graphic, technical and semantic models, argues in his classic study Allgemeine Modelltheorie (Basic Model Theory) from 1973 that the model is a necessarily abstracted representation of reality. Primarily, it denotes an intended reduction in complexity and a focus on specific elements and attributes to be visualized and interrogated for the sake of understanding distinct phenomena. Stachowiak maintains that there is no singular relation between model and original, but that its representative function occurs for specific subjects within specific time periods and limited to precise operations. This implies there are no right or wrong models, and that there may be diverse models for the same original. In addition, the original may also be a model, in the form of an idea or future plan (Wartofsky 1979: 131–133). Considerations of the model typically revolve around its usefulness for proof, visualization, future-testing and prototyping. However, in terms that exceed its functional properties, the model also operates to express material experiments, utopian ideals and speculative construction. It thus occupies a critical role in developing spatial ideas, in that it develops a material identity in parallel with the conceptual. Any model, be it theoretical, mathematical, architectural or of a stage set, comes into being through complex processes of modelling marked by corrections and optimizations, inclusions and rejections. The model thus has a dual epistemic function: it produces knowledge through distinct modelling processes, and it communicates knowledge through its final form.

‘Models are carriers of a cargo’, writes Bernd Mahr in his study on the relation between model and image. For Mahr, the model acts as a mediator and communicator of complex issues. When looking at it, we rather look beyond it to understand the workings of a system, the function of a machine, the structural design of a building or transformation of a theatre stage. This ‘look beyond’ equates with ‘cargo’, Mahr’s succinct term, by relating the substance and function for which the object or idea is a model (Mahr 2008: 32).²

Beyond their pragmatic value, architecture and theatre models carry cargo or semantic surplus that does not sit in strictly analogous relation to reality, scale or purpose but that might be best described as an atmosphere, a distinct aesthetics, and a set of meanings or symbolic representations. The sum of these immaterial qualities in coalescence with the material reality of the model comprises the world or the reality of the model and is testament to its cosmopoietic capacity. The origin of cosmopoiesis as aligned with the model rests with Plato’s notion of the world as a paradeigma (model) of an eternal cosmos. In the Timaeus dialogue, Plato develops a cosmology based on the idea of the creation of a unified cosmos from chaos after an eternal model by a divine creator, the demiurge (see Timaeus 28A).

Now, anything created is necessarily created by some cause, because nothing can possibly come to be without there being something that is responsible for its coming to be. Also, whenever a craftsman takes something consistent as his model and reproduces its form and properties, the result is bound in every case to be a thing of beauty, but if he takes as his model something that has been created, the product is bound to be imperfect. (Plato 2008: 16)

A model, to Plato, is a rational construct that is reproduced from an eternal original, and it is teleological in that it strives for an ordered and harmonious outcome yet all depends on the original (model) the craftsman chooses.

So what we have to ask is, again, which of those two kinds of model the creator was using as he constructed the universe. Was he looking at what is consistent and permanent or at what has been created? Well, if this universe of ours is beautiful and if its craftsman was good, it evidently follows that he was looking at an eternal model, while he was looking at a created model if the opposite is the case – though it’s blasphemous even to think it. It’s perfectly clear, then, that he used an eternal model, because nothing in creation is more beautiful than the world and no cause is better than its maker. The craftsman of this universe, then, took as his model that which is grasped by reason and intelligence and is consistent, and it necessarily follows from these premises that this world of ours is an image of something. It is, of course, crucial to begin any subject at its natural starting-point. Where an image and its original are concerned, we had better appreciate that statements about them are similar to the objects they explicate, in the sense that statements about that which is stable, secure, and manifest to intellect are themselves stable and reliable (and it’s important for statements about such things to be just as irrefutable). (Plato 2008: 17)

The eternal model must be understood as a rational and intellectual ideal rather than an existing perfect model. The universe thus created by the demiurge or divine craftsman, according to Plato, is ‘an image of something’ yet it is not a copy but rather the materialization of an immaterial idea. The model is thus unique and always an original. It is ‘stable and reliable’ and, in other words, ‘real’ and by the process of its creation has collapsed the boundaries between original and copy, idea, intention and realization. The significance of Plato’s concept of the created model as reality lies in exactly the refusal to classify the model as a second-order product. Posited as both real and reality-producing, Plato’s notion of the paradeigma strongly resonates with the concept of the autonomous model developed in this project.

Equally relevant for the expanded taxonomy of the model is Olafur Eliasson’s notion of models as ‘co-producers of reality’ in that they create their own reality:

What we are witnessing is a shift in the traditional relationship between reality and representa...