Virtual Models in Theatre, Art and Architecture

What is the impact of virtual models and realms in contemporary theatre, art and architecture?

This volume explores the evolution of virtual models, their transformative spatial potential, and their capacity for world-making using a range of case studies drawn from global contemporary theatre, art and architecture practice.

It draws upon a rich array of contemporary examples, including the Japanese artist collective Dumb Type, Chinese artist Lu Yang, US-Iranian artist Morehshin Allahyari, Björk, and the UK research agency Forensic Architecture. In parallel, a historical overview focused on the formative years of digital society provides context to the rapid development of virtual technologies, including the work of architecture collectives Superstudio and Archigram and seminal art, performance and technology collaborations from 1960s New York onward, enabled by institutions such as MoMA and Bell Labs. Behind this inquiry is a historical and theoretical positioning of the immaterial and its relationship to the material.

Discussing emerging forms of expanded reality (XR) as devices in the theoretical and cultural framework of the virtual model, this study reveals the processes made visible in exhibitions, installations and performances while focusing on overlapping spaces, narratives and actors as they contribute to constructing virtual worlds.

Virtual Models in Theatre, Art and Architecture: Making Worlds reframes the virtual model as dispositif at the interface of the real, the fictional and the virtual, encouraging the reader to critically consider how new technologies open new spaces for knowledge creation and creative expression.