Worldmaking through the virtual model

ABSTRACT This article forms part of a larger research project that examines the distinct genealogies and unique properties of the theatre and architecture model. The current research builds on the authors’ earlier consideration of the physical model and shifts its focus of observation to the virtual model and the resultant virtual worlds. In The Model as Performance (Bloomsbury, 2018), we identify the model’s performative and epistemic qualities and argue for the unique capacity of the physical model to enable and provoke acts of cosmopoiesis or ‘worldmaking’ and ‘worldmodelling’. With its focus on the virtual model, this current project aims to develop two interrelated and hypothetical strands of inquiry. The first one ascertains the virtual model’s unique capacity for worldmaking. The other isolates its performative and epistemic qualities. Both require a positioning towards the physical and virtual model to articulate their elements of interconnection and distinction. Equally, both aspects demand the model’s theoretical positioning towards the ‘real’.