abstract: `Where can I buy holograms?' `Where can I exhibit, there is no more gallery to show me?' These are the two complaints I have heard these past two years, first from the collectors and museum curators, second from the artists, Trained as a psycho-sociologist, I have been the curator and research associate of the Museum of Holography in Washington, D.C. for 7 years, at a time when holography was coming out of the laboratory, creating a real 3-D novelty in people's minds. I saw the mass production growing and the applications multiplying. Meanwhile the artists appeared and started to deal with gallery managers. After the renting period of artworks for exhibits, price went up. The general recession affected the art and the dialogue between collectors and artists became harder. Having my husband as an artist, I know pretty well both sides. My paper tries to analyze the situation to facilitate the communication between artists and collectors. (look here at the collection!)
Holographic thinking is everywhere although we do not realize it. Turn on your TV and you will see many representations of holographic images. It is in many science fiction movies, as well as in books and the news. Now, start your computer and search the Web. What do you see, a screen with plenty of little boxes or frames, each one containing information. You can choose to go deeper by clicking here and there, but ultimately all the little boxes are related to each other. What do you have? A holographic principle where each point stands by itself, containing the whole entity while composing part of it at the same time. The following paragraphs, discussing and evaluating the characteristics of holographic thinking can be read in any order you wish. Each paragraph contributes an understanding of just one aspect of all the ideas which cannot be limited to this paper alone.
Genesis – das Licht als geistige Erfahrung. / The light as spiritual experience
This thesis descibe an installation done for the Braunschweiger Kulturnacht 2005 in the Pyramide, Germany: Imagine that our mind stands in front of us, like an ocean. Its limits are not perceivable, its surface is limitless, smooth and clear, its nature is clear. Imagine the meeting of this smooth surface with, for example, the moon, which we try to represent to ourselves clearly. We can then say that this object is clearly recognised. Lets try to identify exactly this instant. One object, the moon, appears to our mind, through contact with our visual sense. This means that if the sky is clouded, there will be no object to perceive.
We could compare this clear state of mind to the mind of a newborn child who sees the moon for the first time, and perceive it as a simple disc or circle, without thinking « this is the moon ». Later we shape our mind, by some codifications or imprints acquired through the training of the language and the socialisation. These codifications transform our perception. They are like the interferences patterns recorded on the holographic plate, or the codified writing of the hard disc of a computer. A system which has been once educated, or recorded with the terminology « moon » will recognised always this abstract term each time that one of our sense or a touch of the key board, will choose the “moon”.
The research of Odile Meulien and Dietmar Ohlmann is about perceiving a multidimensional world. Not about the cyberspace created for new cinema creation, nor the reality which seems to be created by communication. It's the search for the reality we perceive, when the mind "touches" an object with its senses. In fact, it is a study of the surface of an object, which we can record in its visual appearing, its structure, shape and colors. When using photographic media, the tactile sense of the structure is missing, when using some other reproductive media; we experience somewhere a sensation of fault, something different. When using holography, we are able to record some three dimensional shape which has in fact a lot of parameter of a realistic copy. What is missing is the touch, the smell, the way we can go close and far, surround the object, relate the reflected light to its surrounding. The only interesting attribute of a hologram is for Dietmar Ohlmann its capacity to illustrate a continuum. He likes its changing diffractive character during daytime and surrounds lighting. For Odile Meulien the continuum of a hologram represents a new possible model for understanding wholeness in a social context. In fact, both are working on an educational process together, helping children and adults to find a new position of their own in harmony with living surrounding. Dietmar Ohlmann is working on his artistic side, while Odile Meulien works on educational programs experiencing the perspective of a curator and social analyst. New is the implication of using the latest of the techniques like the atomic force microscopy, which make possible to touch the holographic grating while the holographic image remains untouched. In other words it is the reverse of the usual approach of objects which at first we touch to investigate further. Their difference in experiencing and perceiving scientific and technical approach brings a lot of paradigm in their discussion. Together they will perform this exchange, as a matrix, understood as source, of new ideas.
Many of these papers inspired professionals and outsiders. By reading them now, we can see that much information they carried became already true.
From the abstract you can order the full paper.
abstract: Some people try hard to educate others about the beauty and technical benefits of holographic applications but another generation is already waiting to learn more about the media which talk to them about the future. Today the most common question is 'How can I do holograms with a computer?' 'Can I do it with an Amiga?' For the MIT specialists these are now very simple questions. We can expect to see the present shape of the holographic laboratory pass into history. I personally like to work with a VHS camera and mix it with CAD/CAM images, but computer and video are not the only media which will change the face of holography. The He.Ne. will be exchanged by diode laser. In a wavelength of 690 nm, some of them bring 40 mW in single mode and single line, not bigger than your little finger. Having such energy in so little a container, and the state of the art drifts rapidly into more flexibility. Using new media and introducing it in our societies give us a new responsibility. Would too much media kill the art? I donot think so, because I like the variety of media which give new possibility of expression. The game with new media is the power of creativity and it will find its meaning by itself.
The making of holograms is better understood than their uses. As an artist who studied holography in Liverpool and at the Royal College of Art in London in the fine art section, I like to use this media in a quite unusual way avoiding the well-worn cliches of Laser-Light-Kitchen- Object-Table-Top-Photography and all these horrible, greenish, blinking plastics. After seeing a master and being introduced to its potential and being inspired by artists such as Rod Murray , Rick Silverman, Margaret Benyon, and Peter Miller I used to spend more time in the Laser- Laboratory than in my painting studio. However, this is no longer true. I have been working on the Millennium-Project since 1996. The project is the idea of Werner Lindemann who is creating a gigantic Amphitheater. On this site, I have the opportunity to meet all sorts of artists and craftsmen, such as opera singers, ceramics designers and architects, to whom I introduced several different large scale projects. Forced to work out installations of a minimum 20 square meters in dimension, I have developed what I call the None- Hologram.
In these past 30years, Holography has been mainly used in museum for exhibitions itself. Now, in our digital world, Space – time coordinates can be printed as digital Holograms, giving a new educational tool to museum. Digital 4 dimensional files are available as DICOM in medicine, CAD in Engineering and Architecture, and as 3-D scan format in Geography and digital Archaeology. Our experience with museums shows the interest of digital holography especially for its visual, educational and attractive capacity of presentation. Presentations in museums required from curators almost a scientific approached of what is possible with what they dreams to use for their exhibitions. Syn4D™ is offering a full service of imaging creation and display of synthetic 4dimensional information called Synfograms. The main advantage to use digital holograms lay in the capacity to create, not just reproduce content in time and space, showing what otherwise would not be possible to explain and visualised. The price, the additional lightning, and limited mass production still make the media a luxury. We provide the interface between the conceptual ideas, printable file, and final display which communicate the museums need, and the technology. According to the museums, we have been working on different applications and presentations types, which will be illustrated in this lecture.
