Rendering the Desert of The Real is a series of curated esasys as part of the Photographers' Gallery's Unthinking Photography series of online writings and essays. I was commissioned to edit and bring together work exploring the influence and role of computer generated imagery technology in our conception of reality. Four initial essays were commissioned:
An introductory text to the series, Rendering The Desert of the Real by myself exploring a brief history of doctoring of images and their political role. The Enstasis of Elon Musk by Tamar Shafrir giving an overview of the rendering and ideation technologies of architecture that have come to define the imagination of the city. Embodying Others by Simone Niquille which presents a video essay of how the current slate of CGI technologies are used to construct the environment for forensic purposes and Into the Universe of Rendered Architectural Images by Joel McKim discusses the relationship between the technical and the imaginable.
While the CGI of Marvel’s latest blockbuster might be technically impressive and visually overwhelming or even, in many cases, visually distracting there’s something quite uncanny and disquieting about browsing a catalogue of images of places that never existed; of imagining these never-places in your own home, of desiring a play of light and materials that was carefully calibrated based on impossible physics.
06.2019
An introductory text to the series, Rendering The Desert of the Real by myself exploring a brief history of doctoring of images and their political role. The Enstasis of Elon Musk by Tamar Shafrir giving an overview of the rendering and ideation technologies of architecture that have come to define the imagination of the city. Embodying Others by Simone Niquille which presents a video essay of how the current slate of CGI technologies are used to construct the environment for forensic purposes and Into the Universe of Rendered Architectural Images by Joel McKim discusses the relationship between the technical and the imaginable.
While the CGI of Marvel’s latest blockbuster might be technically impressive and visually overwhelming or even, in many cases, visually distracting there’s something quite uncanny and disquieting about browsing a catalogue of images of places that never existed; of imagining these never-places in your own home, of desiring a play of light and materials that was carefully calibrated based on impossible physics.
06.2019