Holography art

Holography art uses holograms - laser-recorded interference patterns that reconstruct a full three-dimensional light field - as an artistic medium. The technique was conceptualized by Dennis Gabor in 1947 and became practical with the laser; Yuri Denisyuk's reflection holograms (1962) and Stephen Benton's rainbow holograms (1968), viewable in white light, put it in artists' hands. Exhibitions at Cranbrook Academy of Art (1968) and in New York (1970) preceded Salvador Dalí's celebrated 1972 show, and the studios and museums founded in the 1970s - from San Francisco to London - fostered artist-holographers such as Margaret Benyon, Harriet Casdin-Silver, Dieter Jung and Moysés Baumstein. They treated the hologram not as a three-dimensional photograph of a sculpture but as a new medium in its own right: floating, spectral, parallax-driven imagery.

Defining characteristics

• True three-dimensional images built from light: the view shifts with the viewer's position (parallax)
• Spectral, transparent figuration - bodies appear as pure luminous essence
• Rainbow-like colour gradients from white-light diffraction, or achromatic black-and-white variants
• Speckle grain and depth effects unique to laser-recorded imagery
• Works shown as lit plates or as room-scale light installations
• Hybrid pieces combining holograms with sculpture, video, music or laser light

Key figures

• Dennis Gabor (1900-1979) — Physicist who invented holography in 1947, decades before artists could use it
• Yuri Denisyuk (1927-2006) — Soviet physicist whose reflection holograms (1962) made 3D images viewable in white light
• Stephen A. Benton (1941-2003) — Inventor of the rainbow hologram (1968), the form that made art holograms practical to display
• Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) — First celebrated artist to take up holography; his 1972 New York show brought it wide attention

Example works

• First Cylindric Chrono-Hologram Portrait of Alice Cooper's Brain — Salvador Dalí and Selwyn Lissack (1973)
• Holographic self-portrait — Ventseslav Saynov (1995)

Sources

• Holography art - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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