CHAPTER 2 — Concepts of Modeling
10-minute read
What is a model? We’ve learned that the mental image you have in response to that question is itself a model. A model can be an ideal or an abstraction, a pragmatic object or an object of kitsch. We’ll take a brief look at these concepts of the model as a way to clarify the place of digital modeling.
Cosmology
Before a rigorous scientific study of the cosmos came the field of cosmology. Cosmological explanations of the Universe were dominated by religious and metaphysical models. Many of those models still carry a strong metaphorical value. For these belief systems, creation (or cosmogony) and destruction (or eschatology) of the Universe play an important role in developing ethical and existential models for humanity’s role in the world.
As humans applied science to cosmology, cosmological models came to be based on more subtle perceptual realities. The geocentric theory of the cosmos proposed by Ptolemy could not account for phenomena like retrograde motion in planetary movement. Increasingly and implausibly complex models, such as the one hypothesized by Tycho Brahe, didn’t succeed in accounting for these either. Only when Copernicus prevailed did a cosmological model successfully predict heavenly phenomena.
Geography
Developments in geography and the mapping of the earth paralleled developments in cosmology. The earliest map is the Imago Mundi of 6th Century BCE Babylon. It features a small disk with a landmass and seven islands surrounded by a “bitter river.” It is reminiscent of the flat, wrinkled disk of Hebrew cosmology. Although similar in visual structure, it is seemingly richer in detail than the 7th Century CE “T and O” map described by Saint Isidore of Seville. However, we can misread the T and O map as a depiction of a flat earth.
6th Century BCE
We might more correctly interpret this medieval map as a projection of a spherical Earth onto a drawing plane. Witness the globus cruciger, an orb topped with a cross popular in the Middle Ages as a symbol of Christian authority. Notice any similarities to the T and O map?
Mapping and dimensionality
Detailed maps from the Middle Ages include proportions and shapes of countries distorted to oval or circular forms to represent the perfection of God’s creation in a geometric metaphor. However, these maps often overlaid historical information in text form. This is weirdly prescient because it included time, the fourth dimension, in a way familiar to any modern user of Google Maps. These were maps used to reinforce religious and political agendas, not for navigation.
For that, the familiar scaled map provided distance and proportional accuracy. It wasn’t a stretch to eventually include elevational information: the third dimension. Hill profiles and hachure, a form of shading, qualitatively suggest height, and some contain spot elevations. Topographic maps quantify vertical data in the form of topographic isolines defining distance from a common datum, such as sea level.
Although beautiful, these maps are primitively static compared to the aforementioned quantum leap of Google Earth. This is the first true 4D map of the planet. It is integrated into Google Maps and updated practically in real-time by contributors. This may be as close as we have ever gotten to Borges’ impossible map of England!
A map of Scottish Highland Clan territories in the late 16th Century CE. View this map on Google Earth.
Archetype and myth
An archetype is a symbol. It represents an idealized model of a person or example upon which other persons or things are modeled. Plato’s Theory of Forms, discussed in Chapter 10, is one philosophical origin for the archetype. That theory referenced a thing in the sensory world to some ideal model of that thing.
Psychoanalysis embraced the concept of the archetype. In the analysis of personality, it refers to one of two phenomena:
- A stereotype, the high-frequency observation of a personality type, or…
- … an epitome, the highest or best such example.
These archetypes include a trickster or a hero, a mother figure or a wise old man, a child or a god, to name just a few. These may be considered generalized versions of a meta-personality that can be identified in otherwise distinct personalities.
Jungian archetypes
This identification in psychoanalysis has been extended to the study of characters present in folklore and literature as far back as prehistoric times. In the early 20th Century, Carl Jung advocated the use of archetypes to explain personality in literature. He suggested the existence of universal forms that elicit particular experiences, emotions, and recognizable behaviors with predictable outcomes. Archetypes have become important both for ancient and modern mythologies. This position was effectively argued by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces. In that book, Campbell refines the Jungian archetype of the Hero into what he terms a monomyth or the hero’s journey. The monomyth becomes a model for numerous narratives across times and cultures. He summarizes the pattern of events thusly:
A hero ventures forth [separation] from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered [initiation] and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure [return] with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
— Joseph Campbell 1 [Bolded parenthetical additions by the author]
Monomyth and narrative
In conversations between George Lucas and Joseph Campbell moderated by Bill Moyers, Lucas details his explicit use of the monomyth in the crafting of the Star Wars narrative. Among the classical motifs Lucas employed, we might recognize the archetype of the Wise Old Man in Obi-Wan Kenobe. The modern use of mythology started by Lucas has continued through the presence of such characters as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings trilogy or Albus Dumbledor in the Harry Potter franchise, all examples of the archetypal Wise Old Man.
Before committing to the 3D modeling of a character in an animation, CGI, or game environment, consider the role of archetypes and mythopoetic models in the narrative. At the conceptual stage of development, modeling is a narrative enterprise! Awareness of this will make your digital modeling outcomes more resonant.
Theory and diagram
Scientific modeling
Alpinekat (Kate McAlpine, who fortunately keeps her day job as a science writer) rocks the geekiest rap ever seen by 6 million people, about the Large Hadron Collider. This is the largest atom smasher in the world. Through precise collision, it seeks to confirm the presence of the smallest entities, particles that make up the Standard Model of quantum physics.
Scientists require a means of visualizing conceptual, mathematical, or otherwise abstract information. They require scientific modeling, here described in Wikipedia:
A scientific model seeks to represent empirical objects, phenomena, and physical processes in a logical and objective way. All models are in simulacra, that is, simplified reflections of reality, but despite their inherent falsity, they are nevertheless extremely useful. Building and disputing models is fundamental to the scientific enterprise. Complete and true representation may be impossible (see non-representational theory), but scientific debate often concerns which is the better model for a given task, such as the most accurate climate model for seasonal forecasting. 2
Making the abstract tangible
Abstract models need a means to be visualized, and this often occurs through a type of simplified model known as the diagram, typically a 2D symbolic representation of information generated through drawing, illustration, or modeling technique, although 3D models can be used and projected back into a 2D context. Diagrammatic models come in many forms. They often use symbolic visual language. Arrows might be used to indicate process, time, or relationship. Like the plaques placed aboard Pioneer 10 and 11, they may attempt to transcend the limits of verbal language through the use of a visual or mathematical one.
Much of the 3D modeling interface, in particular the animation timeline, is diagrammatic and therefore itself a representation of an abstract process. The designers of the modeling interface found themselves making a model that makes a model! Thus you may indeed find that something you need to model is abstract, and you’ll indulge in 3D diagrammatic modeling. A diagram is a way of making the invisible visible.
Prototype and production
A prototype is a working model, one created to predict some physical outcome or phenomenal aspect of a concept. Boston Dynamic’s BigDog robot prototype is what is known as a proof-of-concept prototype, demonstrating that the idea (here, a sophisticated, reflexive, all-terrain military robot) can be made into some kind of reality. Prototype, because the loud buzzing-bee servomotors and other aspects of engineering and manufacture were not addressed in 2005 to concentrate on reflexes and motion, though by 2023 many of these bugs have buzzed away.
Evolution of Boston Dynamic’s Robots, 2023
Other kinds of prototypes include the form study, the visual prototype, and the functional prototype. The functional prototype works out all the kinks as close to the production level as possible. Once a prototype hits production, we still refer to the object as a model. For example, Henry Ford continued to call his famous mass-produced vehicle the Model T. It was based on a prototype to create an affordable vehicle and marks 1908 as the beginning of the Auto Age in America. By 1920, every other car owned in the country was a Model T.
Miniatures and mock-ups
In our History of Modeling section, we mentioned the strange concept of the map of reality entering the reality being mapped. In Philadelphia, we can explore an instance of this in the Welcome Park by VSBA. It functions as a conceptual sketch of the city plan in a miniature park.
Spectacle, propaganda, and kitsch
Miniature parks like Tobu World Square import scaled realities across space and time. Often mistaken for a sincere representation, these parks often cross the border from serious mapping into the realms of spectacle, propaganda, or kitsch, depicting a reality that never was, is not, and never will be.
We find such kitsch paradises in the large but still miniature-scaled mockups of icons and landmarks in Disney World and Las Vegas. In Vegas, you can visit New York, Paris, and Venice and never leave your car.
These strange instances of displaced mapped and modeled objects suggest a post-spatial way of experiencing the world, where symbol supersedes authenticity and a sanitized view of the world prevails. Here we close with some important thoughts for 3D artists on the ramifications of kitsch in art by Milan Kundera, from his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being:
The fact that until recently the word ‘shit’ appeared in print as s— has nothing to do with moral considerations. You can’t claim that shit is immoral, after all! The objection to shit is a metaphysical one. The daily defecation session is daily proof of the unacceptability of Creation. Either/or: either shit is acceptable (in which case don’t lock yourself in the bathroom) or we are created in an unacceptable manner.
It follows, then, that the aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch…
Kitsch is the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements…
Whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch. When I say “totalitarian,” what I mean is that everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life…
In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions. It follows, then, that the true opponent of totalitarian kitsch is the person who asks questions. A question is like a knife that slices through the stage backdrop and gives us a look at what lies hidden behind it.
— Milan Kundera 3
The modeler filters everything that enters the modeled world. Is the modeled world thus, by nature, a world prone to kitsch, omitting by desire any undesirable detail?