I’m still reeling from the knowledge that the Windows 10 desktop background is a real photo and not CGI
At this point in my internet life, I’ve been conditioned to just assume that everything I see is fundamentally “fake” in some way, either made up by some guy or computer generated in any number of ethically or practically dubious ways. But Windows 10’s desktop background, with the blue light bursting out of a Windows logo suspended in a void? That was real, baby, that actually happened.
The design was a collaboration between Microsoft and the artist GMUNK, and it’s not like it was a secret or anything: There’s been a post on GMUNK’s website and a YouTube video of the thing in motion up online for nearly a decade. But I think we’re all so conditioned to disregard or otherwise devalue so much of what we see, why on earth would anyone spare a thought for a corporate branding exercise destined to be replaced with videogame concept art or something anyway? I never consciously said “surely this image is CGI,” I simply blanked out the default Windows 10 desktop background the way I might do to an advertisement or garbage post on Reddit.
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But the fact that it came from a physical installation is mind-boggling—with that knowledge, I look at the thing and wonder how it was even possible. GMUNK’s webpage dedicated to the project explains it best, but basically: The artist shot different colored lasers and other light sources through a glass Windows logo suspended with wires, while the effect was further enhanced with billowing volumetric smoke pumped through the set. GMUNK captured the results with a high-speed camera, and the final image used in the Windows 10 desktop was a composite of several frames from the shoot.
The exercise definitely feels like it came from another era of tech marketing—a slightly melancholic nostalgia piece from the freewheeling days of the go-go 2010s. I find myself pleasantly surprised that, just this once, something I had assumed to be more pointless visual noise from the computer was actually a genuinely interesting physical creation in the real world. You can check out some more shots from the photo shoot below—my favorite is probably the red and pink variation on pitch black.
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