This series of renders, done at the office of NEIL M. DENARI and published in his book MASSX, represents an experiment in turning the digital back onto itself through the medium of contemporary architectural representation. The subject of these images is NMDA’s design submission for the Nam June Paik museum,dedicated to the Korean digital artist. As a critique of current attitudes towards the practice of rendering architectural projects whereby all projects are subject to the same treatment (either neutral/agnostic palettes or “hyper-real” presets at the push of a button), this set of renders insists that a project’s mode of representation cannot be removed from its concept. Indeed, its representation is itself a design endeavor, not simply a byproduct the design process, nor should it ever be treated as such.
Here, Paik’s “TV Buddha,” in which the Buddha assumes both subject and object by transmitting and watching himself, again becomes the subject of the compositions in this series. With multiple instances of the installation, the space of the museum itself is rendered a scaled version of the piece, becoming the space of transmission between and transcendence from the organic to the digital.
