Abstraction and Imagination

In the last several days I have been thinking about two distinct questions as they pertain to making model railways: the first is the role of abstraction in model making, the second is the role of the imagined subject. Both topics have been the subject of "indirect discussion" for some time, but I think it is worth untangling them.

I have been thinking about abstraction in regards to Dan Pickard's Bush in a Box project. In a post on the Railroad-Line forum he made it clear that the square tips on some plants he modeled were not unintentional-- that he imagined layering detail, so that the over all impression of the model was convincing, but also indicating that much would remain abstract. To my eye this is thinking in the mode of a painter. I think the best model makers also think this way, recognizing where gesture and a viewers expectation conspire to create a complete illusion. It is convincing and efficient. At a time when it is possible to miniaturize so much--so many models are literal reductions--it is easy to forget this essential part of the model makers art.

To my eye, the imagined model has similar potential for the model maker,. An imagined model executed well convinces the viewer to suspend their disbelief and enter an imagined realm-- a place, or state of mind (to borrow the phrase Anders Wirten used recently on Model Rail Radio) that they might never have otherwise experienced or entertained. When we visit George Selios' Franklin and South Manchester, we do not visit depression era New England, but Visit a world created from whole cloth now shared by viewer and maker. While truth might always be stranger than fiction, our ability to create and experience fiction is distinctly powerful.

The photo here has nothing to do with either of the above points, rather it is my own digression into imagining Pieter Breugel's Tower of Babel as a model railway.