john berger argues that the oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations -- that is, it made everything visible a commodity that can be acquired through money. the oil painting as a format developed a way of seeing that elevated (or denigrated) everything within the frame to a commodity. advertising, he argues, follows the oil painting historically, learning from it and employing its same mode of commodity driven perception in order to sell products. the architectural rendering, created by 3d modeling softwares, rendering engines, and photoshop, is a part of this same historical lineage of sight. the rendering sells something. to render a project is to reduce it to a commodity that a client can choose to buy (or discard). it sells a possible future, just as the advertisement does in john berger’s perspective.