We all recognize that art particularly, performance art, requires both a suspension of disbelief in that we accept a representation of an object or an event as that event, and that this representation can occur on a number of levels. It might be assumed that contemporary developments such as virtual reality systems have obscured these distinctions, but if we look at the performing arts we still find an ambiguous relationship between acts that are represented and things that are real.
Architecture also contains different levels of representation.
Many performance spaces are designed to suggest a space of a very different character an outdoor amphitheater, a garden, a tent etc. Perhaps as a result of these conceptual similarities, there have been numerous attempts from Palladio to Steven Holl to link music, theater, dance and film to architecture.