Solaris:
Publicity Stunt

This is what happens when an artist hides in the career of a computer geek and software programmer.

It was 1994, and I had recently relocated to Manhattan from Seattle.

With Mark Evenson, we toyed with the idea of doing a publicity stunt.

Herb Hoover– always on the look-out for stunning images– made action out of those words.

[ Photo Copyright © 1994, Herbert Hoover ]

The photograph was originally intended for submission to niche magazine, which we decided against when that publication strived for mainstream adoption unlikely to appreciate subtlety of the humor.

In 1994, Solaris was still fairly young. (We were still upgrading back to the older 4.2BSD-derived version of SunOS for stability.) But we knew it was the inevitable future of commercial Unix for the 1990’s.

While posing for this photo, I was offered a job interview. The man took some convincing before accepting that this was just a publicity stunt. (One would have thought that Herb holding his professional camera would have provided the clue.)

Although this image became a sign of the times in early 2001, it was more about how an artist might find his patron.

Thank you, Mark & Herb!