A model of a model of the world: towards a practice of 'critical modelling' for museums
Using two case studies in which 19th century models have been digitised and re-activated through immersive technologies, this lecture explores how museums might employ a 'critical modelling' approach to the display and interpretation of historical physical models in order to better understand their object lives and ongoing significance.
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The first case study, The Virtual Illés Initiative, concerns an augmented virtual reconstruction of the Illés Relief, a 1:500 scale model of late Ottoman Jerusalem, built by the expatriate Hungarian-Jerusalemite bookbinder Stefan Illés.
Originally exhibited in the Ottoman Pavilion at the 1873 Vienna World's Fair, the model subsequently toured Europe to an audience of millions, bringing a panoramic, immersive experience of the Holy City to mass audiences. Now on permanent loan to the Tower of David Museum in Israel, it is a rare record of Ottoman Palestine that preserves many non-extant features, including the destroyed Mughrabi Quarter.
The recent virtual reconstruction re-sites cultural and historical sources of Ottoman Jerusalem within a modular real-time digital model, with the aim of providing greater access to knowledge embedded in the original and expanding the potential for its historical interpretations.
The second case study, Games of Empire, involves the use of critical modelling methodologies to construct video game reconstructions of 19th century British board games in the collection of the Powerhouse Museum.
The late 19th century saw an expansion in a games-making industry in England which produced a tradition of highly-crafted board games that were exported throughout the Empire. These were not only parlour entertainments but played a role in household education as well as in the transmission of role models of British imperial identity. Games of Empire explores how the rules of such games intersected with the origins of machine code and algorithmic logic, how ideas of Imperial order were transmitted through popular culture, and how these now-anachronistic models of civilisational politics might be challenged through 21st century technologies of game-making and virtual modelling.
Dr Andrew Yip is an immersive designer, art historian and artist whose work explores embodied and interactive approaches to virtual heritage. Andrew designs large scale immersive environments for galleries and museums and his work has been exhibited at institutions including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Powerhouse Museum, Heide MoMA, South Australian Maritime Museum and internationally. He is based at UNSW, Sydney where he is co-lead of immersive modelling at the iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research.
Header image: 19th Century Model of Jerusalem in the Tower of David, 2007. Image by Deror avi.