AbstractsPhysics

Rainbow holograms

by Amy Rush




Institution: University of New South Wales
Department: Art
Year: 2007
Keywords: Rainbow; Art and holography
Record ID: 1031910
Full text PDF: http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/35241


Abstract

Rainbow holography is the medium I have chosen to specialize in. Holography itself uses light as a sculptural element. In regards to my work, rainbow holography stresses the field of experimentation with the light spectrum until a certain point that I define as travelling the superhighway from reality to virtual worlds. My work appears then as the documentation, in the form of rainbow holograms, of this travel. It depicts narrative imagery while capturing the moments I existed in this virtual world set behind the rainbow. This project aims to present through still, 3D and filmic imagery the co – existence of the physical body and its psychological realm. The psychological reality is articulated as a fictional landscape and the rainbow is used as a metaphor for travel between real and virtual worlds. More importantly, I see holography or rainbow holography as a means of crystallising the vision of the unreachable world behind the rainbow. I see my practice as a new way of using this medium by using this rainbow world as subject matter within the rainbow hologram. By experimenting with combined image processing techniques within rainbow holography, such as analogue white light transmission holograms, full colour digital stereograms, and dot matrix holograms, it becomes possible to generate a synthetic new world. Here each pixel can have the potential to be every color of the rainbow spectrum simultaneously, depending on the angle of the eye of the perceiver. It is here that my investigation through holographic representation has led me to explore and create other worldly landscapes and to extend reality. Our longing to travel over the rainbow into our imagination is with us from a very young age. For me this desire has lasted well into adulthood and has somehow found itself at the centre of my creations over the last few years. The childlike and naïve appearance of my imagery has the ability to evoke the feeling in the viewers of the nostalgia they may have felt as a child, when confronted with the intense experience and wonder of the imaginings of the rainbow. My work trades on a misunderstanding that the medium of holography is taken as a direct representation of an existing reality. My first hologram I’m a rainbow depicts an alter-egotistical projection of myself as a rainbow princess living in a far away fairytale rainbow galaxy, and communicating with earth beings via the technology of the message contained within the hologram. The hologram has often been associated in science fiction with a message to save the planet. This body of work invites viewers to delve into the depths of their imagination, to save this place where I have travelled by believing in it. As in the story of peter pan where the children are asked to clap their hands if they believe in fairies, by others believing in my imagination they are able to save it. The world within the imagination holds no fixed place; it is a shifting and dynamic space. This quality is shared with the rainbow, which is similarly ephemeral, vanishing and…