A 3D vision of the afterlife

“Spatial design has always interested me, particularly if it is highly structured.” Perhaps that’s why Adam Black – who is just 19-years-old – was a very enthusiastic tree house builder when he was a child. “I even built one on my neighbour’s roofs, causing major damage to her satellite dish,” he recalls of his life-long interest in personal spaces. Currently in his first year studying Interaction Design at the Cape Town Creative Academy in South Africa, Black has moved on from the tree house sculpting of his childhood. His interest, and resulting expedition into the ‘art void’, came about at the age of 16. “My art teacher started encouraging me to do whatever I wanted. That really opened up the possibilities for me of what could be done,” he says.

Now he uses a combination of digitally-animated architecture and vector graphics to explore an as-of-yet unvisited version of reality. He’s interested in “clean, clinical and ordered design,” although finds it near impossible to “create the spaces I desire physically due to the constraints of physics. Digital art has allowed me to create spaces for myself in which I find a connection to the divine."

"The Physicality of Space", the South African-born, English-raised artist’s final college project involved experimenting with the basics of 3D image and animation construction. “The project originated with my examination of religious architecture and the different ways these places of worship connect to the divine. It investigated the intersections between the physical, digital and spiritual realms – specifically the crossroads between the Internet and virtual reality.” Visually eye-popping and otherworldly, he aimed to explore the meta-physicality of the Internet as a realm beyond reality: “a sort of afterlife,” he says.