Larger Than Life: Immersion and Imagination in the Not-So-Small Worlds Sustained by Scale

318 THE VALUE OF DESIGN Larger Than Life: Immersion and Imagination in the Not-So-Small Worlds Sustained by Scale DONALD KUNZE Pennsylvania State University Despite the common use of scale models made of being in two places at once makes the LTL model at a “smaller scale” than the 1:1 of everyday life, a scale model par excellence and, because it mate- the case of the “larger-than-life” (LTL) model is rializes the essential operations of the imagination, not only signifi cant but instructive.1 Like the set a model of the imagination’s role in architecture of Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, where and other forms of art as well. Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint are chased over the presidential faces of Mt. Rushmore, or the pen- LTL immersability can be conferred on models that etrable Statue of Liberty in the New York harbor, are not technically larger-than-life, or not even the immersability of the user of the LTL model models in the strict sense: Kurt Schwitters’ Merz- demonstrates the key quality of all scale models: bau, Jacques Tati’s set for the fi lm Playtime (1967), the ability of scale consistency to sustain the il- the National Mall in Washington, D. C., or even the lusion of the model’s imaginary world.2 The LTL “lands” created by Walt Disney to support bad faith model allows the viewer to enter, often literally, versions of the wild west, the future, or fairy tales. into the perceptual fi eld created by the model, but Whenever the viewer can fi nd a place inside the during this immersion scale difference prevents a fi eld of what can be regarded as a model, even full merger of viewer with the viewed. Instead, the when the question of “model of what?” cannot be LTL, like all scale models, keeps open a minimal answered, the role of the “unseen hand” can be gap in the subject’s point of view. This gap splits reversed: the subject can directly enter into the the point of view between an inside and an outside fantasy of the model. This makes the LTL model of the model space. Like a child’s play with toys, representative of art as a whole, where, as Mikel this gap allows intervention by an “unseen hand,” Dufrenne put it, we enter into the world of the ar- but it also bestows a magical vitality on the scaled tistic illusion by seeing through its eyes, hearing objects, which acquire powers of motility, thought, through its ears, walking on its feet, etc.4 and (sometimes) voice and sight.3 This “uncanny” feature of the scale model is particularly evident in The LTL model would seem to come close to re- the LTL’s ability to immerse the subject and invert alizing the ideal of immersive digital representa- the inside-outside relationship that is more literally tion, where multiple screens or motion-compensat- evident in the typical small-scale model. In the LTL, ing goggles surround the viewer with a simulated the boundary is akin to that of the infi nite sphere world. However, there is a fundamental difference described by Pascal — as God, whose center is ev- that goes to the heart of the ideological difference erywhere and periphery nowhere. Without a dis- between the scale model and digital representa- coverable edge, the boundary function is displaced tion. In the case of the scale model, consistency not only on to the subject-as-spectator but on to of scale sustains the illusion of the representation objects with divided bodies and natures: the out- but maintains a clear divide between the viewer side frame function is displaced on to an “inside and the viewed; for the digital representation, the frame” capable of fl ipping such inside-outside rela- variability of scale minimizes or erases distinctions tionships as viewer-viewed, mind-body, and past- between the viewer and the viewed. Like the com- present. A few examples will show how this quality puter gaming software Wii, even the user’s motions LARGER THAN LIFE 319 are meshed smoothly into the virtual world. This the boundaries of the event. Second, this on-off highlights ideological issues: does the integration function is carried into the interior of the scale of the subject promote ethically questionable appli- model; elements are then empowered by such “un- cations of representation, as when drone assassin canny” qualities as voluntary motion, thought, and aircraft are operated from bases remote from their intentionality. Even where scale models have no targets; or when addicted users of video games as- literal scale subjects, our own imagined subjective similate the games’ violent Weltanschauung? The presence is not our own but, rather, the model’s. scale model requires two incommensurable spaces We animate the model by going inside it and con- for viewing-as-reception. The subject can never be verting this inside into an outside. In some sense, fully integrated into the illusion without collapsing the scale model is like the team of the ventriloquist it. This incommensurability amounts to a construc- and the dummy. The ventriloquist must cultivate tion of a minimum distance, in both the subject and an internal schizophrenia that the audience can ex- the model, that folds out to become the dimension- perience as two persons. The dummy, as a site for al framework for architecture as a surplus of build- the transfer of the ventriloquist’s voice, must be ing.5 Borrowing from medical science, we call this symbolically “emptied out,” typically through some function “stereognosis” —“knowledge of the world abjection: the dummy is usually a young child or through touch,” which involves a division between dwarf, idiotic, and of course immobile. We think of left and right, inside and outside, front and back, scale as a matter of convenience in representation, etc. — where the perceived world is permanently but it is also a token of the control that representa- antipodal to a perceiving subject. It seems clear tion affords us. Our power over the represented is that digital representation can neither create nor embodied in (usually) our scale superiority, which sustain this minimum gap or its essential stereog- is a way of “emptying out” the site of representa- nosis; therefore there is, I will argue, no dimension tion so that we can enter into it as an invisible, to allow architecture, which requires the antipodes powerful presence.8 of subject and object, to (literally) take place, as discourse, thought, or experience.6 In the LTL, >1:1 scale model, it seems that power and control are sacrifi ced for a reversal of the THE TRUMAN MOMENT usual miniaturization procedure. Our subjectiv- ity is dwarfed by representations that abject us, The typical scale model used by architects and ar- rather than we them. From a position inside the chitecture students sits in a space that it disavows LTL scaled space, we ourselves cannot see the ter- in two ways: the physical edge of the model frames minus that is the cut-off switch of the illusion. Like it as an intentional representation, and the uniform the imagined scaled subjects of a miniature model, scale of the model establishes the illusion of a min- we are blind. In The Truman Show (1998), Truman iature world, with its own rules of form, motility, Burbank (Jim Carrey) is the dupe of television pro- and identity. The scale model’s alternative physics ducers who fi lm his daily actions and set up scenes constitutes a kind of rhetoric, a “what if” that per- to create the ultimate reality show. They cleverly suades us to suspend our disbelief and, as observ- conceal the “fourth wall” of production equipment ers, become silent and invisible with respect to the and instruct the actors whom he believes to be his life of the scale model. Thus, a hand moving objects friends and neighbors so that he does not notice the around inside the frame is made invisible — a part of trick. There is no obvious scale difference to alert the necessary stagecraft. Imaginary inhabitants of Truman to the model status of Seahaven, Florida, the model are blind to our intervention and, like the but his handlers enjoy a dimensional freedom he characters on a stage or in a fi lm, blind to the real lacks. Truman complains only that his fellow resi- audience sitting beyond the “fourth wall” of their dents seem detached and “scripted.” His innocent environing illusion.7 While one of the aims of the attempts to leave town are thwarted by “accidents” scale model is to be as realistic as possible, there and simulated obstacles, but he eventually escapes are two important exceptions to this realism. First, through a door in the wall of his constructed real- the terminus of the model functions also as an on- ity, to the cheers of the audience of millions who off switch triggering and extinguishing the “event” has, up to now, taken cruel pleasure in his mock of the model. We go inside the model imaginatively captivity. to activate its illusion, and step outside to suspend or end it. Objective space becomes subjective time, 320 THE VALUE OF DESIGN ollect their personal encounters with the uncanny. A psychiatrist tells the story of his spooky encoun- ter with a ventriloquist whose schizophrenic ten- dencies gradually gave way to full psychosis. The ventriloquist’s dummy, Hugo, “began to get the up- per hand” and bully his master, by declaring him- self in search of a new business partner. A ventriloquist colleague is enticed into the illusion by clever set-ups and is shot by the jealous master after the dummy is planted in his hotel room.

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