Ed Stastny (USA), born 19/2, Ed published a fanzine in his teens called "Dark Chaos", full of art, rants and reviews. He produced a bi-weekly public-access cable television show called DDT-TV. Discovered Internet in 1990 and became engulfed in the "pure and unhindered flow of information".

Founded on the humble notion of setting up a small Internet based art archive, OTIS ("Operative Term Is Stimulate") was born in January of 1993 on a small FTP archive setup on a backroom machine at the University of Michigan.

The idea of a global electronic art gallery, accessible all day and all night on all continents, was a concept OTIS founder Ed Stastny could scarcely believe hadn't been realized yet. Such a gallery seemed an obvious and exciting application of the high-speed data networks, the proverbial "Cyberspace", that made up the Net.

There just had to be a way to get artists interacting on the net and sharing work, some kind of stimulus... an on-line gallery was just the thing to do it. Thus, originally named "Stimulate", "Operative Term Is Stimulate", OTIS, was created. With its liberal acceptance of all types of visual art and strictly non-commercial stance, OTIS promptly filled a niche for the on-line art community.