With this digital representation of a model train, we have tried to rebuild something that is already the miniature version of its giant original. Or in other words: We created the replica of a replica. From an actual, live-sized train to a model train out of plastic to a 3D model only made out of pixels and code. Following the theory of many scholars, with every step of replicating, the train in question lost something - the question is, what is this something?
To understand the concept, we first want to explain this phenomenon. In the academic world, it's called “The medium is the message” (Manoff, 2006, p.313). The easiest example is the smartphone: These small technical devices shape their content through limited space and limited usability (Manoff, 2006, p.313). Therefore, content on the smartphone is subject to the material characteristics of the medium (Manoff, 2006, p.313). But by this, it also loses part of its meaning, its own characteristics and its ability to create connections to us (Manoff, 2006, p. 313). Lester argues that we respond to these especially physical characteristics, like the feeling of a book or the smell of an old document (Lester, 2018, p.78). In combination with (in the case of a book) the written text, the material influences our emotional response and shapes together with cognitive and intellectual our understanding of the collective whole (Lester, 2018, p.78).