At this point in my online life, I’ve come to simply assume that everything I see is somehow fundamentally “fake,” either made up by some guy or computer-generated in any number of ethically or practically questionable ways. But a Windows 10 desktop background with blue lithe emanating from the Windows logo suspended in the void? It was real, baby, it really happened.
The project was created as a result of Microsoft’s cooperation with the artist GMUNK and it is not a secret or anything like that: the post appeared on GMUNK website ia YouTube video of an object in motion on the Internet for almost a decade. But I think we’re all conditioned to disregard or otherwise devalue so much of what we see, so why on earth would anyone consider company branding activities to be replaced by graphics anyway video game concept or something? I never consciously said “surely that image is CGI.” I simply erased the default Windows 10 desktop background, like I might do with an ad or a junk Reddit post.
But the fact that it comes from a physical installation is astounding – having this knowledge, I look at this thing and wonder how it was even possible. The GMUNK website dedicated to the project explains it best, but in a nutshell: the artist shot multi-colored lasers and other lithe sources through a glass Windows logo suspended on wires, and the effect was further enhanced by clouds of volumetric smoke pumped through the set. The GMUNK team captured the results using a high-speed camera, and the final image used on the Windows 10 desktop was a composite of several frames from the session.
This exercise definitely feels like it’s from a different era of tech marketing – it’s a slightly melancholy slice of nostalgia for the freewheeling go-go days of the 2010s. I’m pleasantly surprised that just this once, what I thought was meaningless visual noise from the computer was actually a truly captivating physical creation in the real world. You can see more shots from the photoshoot below—my favorite is probably the red/pink variation of jet black.
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