Building physical models is one way of visualizing space and form. It is used by playing children as well by architects and engineers playing. An extension of rational thinking or of irrational experimentation, building models manifests iconic forms. Models are a primal type of communication, not language but nevertheless a set of communicating shapes, symbols, and materials that sculpt space and transmit ideas and emotions. And models are seductive - miniature worlds: psychologically, they touch something in us. With dollhouses, treehouses and play tents we learned as children to invest in fantasy through models and games, to visualize other worlds, and to link those worlds through metaphors and fables to full-scale moral and cultural life. So it seems paradoxical that with the advent of powerful desktop computers and software and their possibilities for exploring and modeling space that one often hears, but, it's-not-real when digital models and worlds are discussed.

Dennis Dollens, 2001, D-2-A Digital to analog