Description
Book SynopsisHow making models allows us to recall what was and to discover what still might be
Whether looking inward to the intricacies of human anatomy or outward to the furthest recesses of the universe, expanding the boundaries of human inquiry depends to a surprisingly large degree on the making of models. In this wide-ranging volume, scholars from diverse fields examine the interrelationships between a model’s material foundations and the otherwise invisible things it gestures toward, underscoring the pivotal role of models in understanding and shaping the world around us. Whether in the form of reproductions, interpretive processes, or constitutive tools, models may bridge the gap between the tangible and the abstract.
By focusing on the material aspects of models, including the digital ones that would seem to displace their analogue forebears, these insightful essays ground modeling as a tactile and emphatically humanistic endeavor. With contributions from scholars in the history of science and technology, visual studies, musicology, literary studies, and material culture, this book demonstrates that models serve as invaluable tools across every field of cultural development, both historically and in the present day.
Modelwork is unique in calling attention to modeling’s duality, a dynamic exchange between imagination and matter. This singular publication shows us how models shape our ability to ascertain the surrounding world and to find new ways to transform it.
Contributors: Hilary Bryon, Virginia Tech; Johanna Drucker, UCLA; Seher Erdoğan Ford, Temple U; Peter Galison, Harvard U; Lisa Gitelman, New York U; Reed Gochberg, Harvard U; Catherine Newman Howe, Williams College; Christopher J. Lukasik, Purdue U; Martin Scherzinger, New York U; Juliet S. Sperling, U of Washington; Annabel Jane Wharton, Duke U.
Table of ContentsContents
Introduction: Modelwork
Martin Brückner and Sandy Isenstadt
Part I. Knowing
1. Defining Models
Annabel Jane Wharton
2. Material Models of Immaterial Things
Peter Galison
Part II. Sensing
3. William Farish’s Devices and Drawings: Models for Envisioning Immaterial and Material Realms
Hilary Bryon
4. “The Instructed Eye”: What Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Drawing Books Tell Us about Vision and How We See
Christopher J. Lukasik
5. Algorithmic Audition: Modeling Musical Perception
Martin Scherzinger
Part III. Making
6. The Useful Arts of Nineteenth-Century Patent Models
Reed Gochberg
7. Bodies Made of Numbers, Numbers Made of Bodies
Catherine Newman Howe
8. Hypermodels: Architectural Production in Virtual Spaces
Seher Erdoğan Ford
Part IV. Doing
9. Modeling Maneuvers: Anatomical Illustration and the Practice of Touch
Juliet S. Sperling
10. Models and Manufactures: The Shoe as Commodity
Lisa Gitelman
11. Modeling Interpretation
Johanna Drucker
Afterword: On the Humility of Models
Sarah Wasserman
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Index
