Between 1943 and 1966, the US Army Corps of Engineers constructed the Mississippi River Basin Model, a 200-acre hydraulic replica used to simulate flooding, erosion and river management. The eight-acre Chesapeake Bay Hydraulic Model built in the 1970s similarly compressed an entire estuary into an operational landscape to study water movements, salinity changes and pollution before interventions occurred in the real world. More than mere representations, these models were instruments of governance that allowed territorial futures to be rehearsed. In the model, one day of river time could be compressed into minutes, making a month-long hydrological change unfold at a time-lapse speed. Today, these monumental models have been mostly abandoned, replaced by sophisticated computational simulations. Modelling is now routine. Climate models, which precede any geoengineering proposal, operate within the planetary scale with the ability to predict temperature and sea-level rise with precision. They simulate and simplify complex systems into measurable variables. Concealed behind algorithms and technical expertise, these models generate predictive frameworks that inform policy and interventions while remaining
largely inaccessible to the public. As James Bridle writes in Ways of Being , models are never neutral representations of reality but actively produce and shape our realities. 4 Bridle revisits physical models as spaces for mutual understanding rather than instruments of dominion and control. Unlike purely digital simulations, physical models occupy space. They are experienced by bodies, navigated collectively, and interpreted through conversation. The physical model is not just a miniature object, not just a static representation; the model acts as a dynamic shared interface between scientists, fishers, policymakers, Indigenous communities and the public. Instead of simply modelling the world, geoengineering interventions such as George’s experiment begin to treat the world itself as the model. The open ocean becomes the site of experimentation with hypotheses tested directly within living global systems. If the world is already subject to being used as a testing ground for planetary interventions, could a physical model of the ocean rehearse these experiments for planned future interventions? Can institutions and spaces be designed to hold such models, allowing them to be visible, accessible and publicly accountable?
Marly Ibrahim
Mapping the planetary geographies of ocean iron fertilisation.
4 James Bridle, Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence. Picador, 2023.
44 on site review 49 :: shorelines
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