Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/610353
ACT 2, SAN FRANCISCO OPERA HOUSE by Peter Borck, Art Director The NeXTcube product launch in 1988 takes place in the historic San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. Here the institutional colors and textures of Act 1 give way to the gilded opulence of the Opera House. We referred to this as the Revenge Act. In selecting this location, Guy was looking for a venue that would complement the heightened emotional and narrative intensity of this act while commenting on the theatrical artifice of the product launch. The NeXTcube was little more than an esthetically pleasing box with no practical application in the real world. Too expensive for public institutions or consumers to be commercially viable, the NeXTcube was visually compelling in its simplicity and its development allowed Jobs to stay relevant in the personal computing world while he exacted revenge against Apple's CEO John Sculley and plotted his own return to the company. Embracing the rich colors of the Opera House's grand public spaces, Guy brought this palette of golds, burgundies and deep ochres into the back-of-house warren of corridors, catwalks, dressing rooms and theater craft shops revealing the seldom- Top: The army of NeXT staff and hardware necessary to run the demo up above on stage for Mr. Job's presentation in 1988. Above, left to right: An overview of the stage setting for the NeXT computer launch at the San Francisco Opera House for Act 2. The Opera House lobby dressed and ready for the NeXT launch of 1988. Below: Mr. Jobs talks with his daughter Lisa, high above the stage of the Opera House. This area was selected to make the audience feel as though they are inside the working circuitry of a giant computer.