A Journey Towards Creative Holography

Abstract

his is a description of a personal journey and is therefore largely a subjective account. I am not seeking to define what 'art holography' is, nor am I advancing a holographic aesthetic. Rather, I am interested in examining the distinction that I feel exists between display holography in general and creative display holography. By display holography, I mean the type of hologram that is normally framed and exhibited as a painting would bethough much of my discussion is equally applicable to other forms. In defining 'creative', I do not claim that creative holography is necessarily 'artistically good' holography: 'creative' refers to a certain approach to making display holograms, the end product not automatically having any consequent artistic merit. It is, of course, possible for a creative display hologram to be visually less appealing than a display hologram of the type I would consider noncreative. The question of what makes some holography fundamentally creative is worth consideration if only because such holography requires a different response from the viewer and because it should raise fundamental questions about holography itself. The first holograms I saw in 1983 were of type that I would not now regard as creative; they were essentially spectacular, consisting of forceful demonstrations of certain properties of holography, mainly of three-dimensionality. If I call such holograms spectacular or, borrowing from Graham Greene, describe them as entertainments, this is not in disparagement. It was the impact of seeing such holograms that motivated me to make a hologram for myself-not to make better holograms, not to become a holographer, but quite simply to make a hologram virtually as a self-challenge. I had no background in art or science (such a lack of background was perhaps not to prove a total disadvantage later). I was not handy, nor had I ever shown any signs of the dogged single-mindedness with which I embarked on the necessary background reading [1] and construction work and overcame the difficulties of obtaining optical equipment. Behaviour so atypical can hardly have been provoked only by three-dimensionality; but whatever the other hidden stimuli, it was in fact three-dimensionality that I was after when, about a year after first seeing a hologram, I was ready to try to make one of my own. By then I had read enough about holography, its theory, its applications and its implications in terms of physics and philosophy to be aware that the potential of holography was greater by far than the representational, even re-creational, type of hologram, that I wanted to make. Nevertheless, what I did, and that with infinite pride and sense of achievement, was to make a small transmission hologram of a plastic swan from a Christmas cracker.