Does this landscape look familiar? Do you feel like you've been here before? Well, you probably have - albeit indirectly. This Sonoma Valley, California hilltop is quite possibly the most familiar landscape in recent history due to the photograph of it that was used as the default desktop wallpaper for the Luna theme in Microsoft Windows XP.
Spotted on VVORK, After Microsoft (2006-07) by Goldin + Senneby revisits the site of the famous Bliss photograph by Charles O'Rear a decade later. It appears the pair of artists have done quite a bit of detective work in developing an installation around this branded landscape - they have interviewed Charles O'Rear, former Microsoft designer Tjeerd Hoek and numerous others. The statement for the piece contextualizes the creation of the iconic original image as follows:
After about a month of rain the sun comes up, and there is beautiful green grass. The weather during the winter can change dramatically. A break in the storm. Intense blue sky with cumulus clouds. Maybe later that day it rained. Blue was an important brand color already in ‘95. Clouds and sky being a common theme in many aspects of the product’s identity and collateral. Illustrating potential and opportunity. Continuing the cloud theme, but with added grounding. The horizon gives a sense of scale to the image. Makes it possible to imagine being there... On this hill grapevines had been planted. But in the early 90s a Phylloxera bug infested the grapes and made them unusable. The entire vineyard had to be pulled out. For a few years the hill was covered with grass. Green at the time of the photograph. Green was the second main color in the branding scheme and in the User Interface. Running late in the product development cycle. Looking for a nature shot. “The reality of real life”. The image matched the brand colors. It fell completely into place, in terms of sky, clouds, blue plus the green field.
It was the Phylloxera bug that provided a momentary lapse in grape production and saw the hill revert to a minimal, grassy state - a pastoral landscape that was the perfect backdrop for the routines and production of millions of knowledge workers.
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