Holograms

I saw some work by August Muth in the Vladem Contemporary, which turned me on to holography. Resources…

(Active) Museums

• Holographic Studios NYC (26th st btwn 2nd & 3rd ave)—offers tours (by appointment) and classes–update: 16 Feb 2024 I went there and took the VIP tour. Dr. Laser is super nice and has some cool holograms (of many different styles), and he led us through the process of making an OK hologram. We all wished it was more technical (our group included scientist and a photographer and a person whose Dad made holograms back in the 1970s before going on to computer nerdery…and we said so). The basement lab is cluttered and dirty, it gave us all some anxiety after spending a bunch of time down there.
• Center for Holographic Arts in Kingston (upstate), NY (2 hr drive, 3-4 hour train/bus from NYC)
• Light Foundry in Santa Fe. August Muth’s studio. Very limited info.

Training/Schools

• International School of Holography offers online courses

Books

• Harper, Holography Projects for the Evil Genius – seems approachable for garage tinkerers
• Kasper & Feller, The Complete Book of Holograms – i have a soft spot for Dover books. Mostly based on geometric/physical arguments, and some practical information
• Unterseher, Hansen, & Schlesinger, Holography Handbook — great 1990s Berkeley publication…emphasis on practical details (setting up a darkroom and lab is the first 100+ pages) rather than theory
• Poon & Liu, Introduction to Modern Digital Holography: With Matlab — appears highly technical/mathematical. Of course, we’ll implement it in Mathematica instead :-)

Holographics Art and Artists

• Deana Lawson Exhibit at Gugenheim 2021 – along with a history of holographic art
• Holography as an art medium (1989)

Gadgets

• LitiHolo print holograms. Also sells kits for making holograms. A neat aspect is that they have self-developing film that eliminates the need for a darkroom AND an optical arrangement that avoids the need to have a vibration isolation table.
• LookingGlass Factory digital light-field display—send your Unity/Blender/etc. models to this to view. Small size is $300, large monitors available. Based in BK

DIY:

• Handmade holograms? Yeah…just make careful scratches in a shiny surface…
  • one of the best practitioners of this is Matt Brand. Apparently MoMath in NYC has some of his work on display
  • Instructables on how to build a bot to do this (a standard CNC isn’t quite right for this)

Supplies

• International Holographics sells a variety of holographic kits, lasers, film, books, etc.

Services

• Holoxica offers digital hologram printing based on your files (point clouds, etc.)
• Geola sells equipemtn for digital holography and scanning, as well as “artist services”, but no details on pricing

Other ideas

• Holographic bolo tie!
  • T-rex coming out at you?
  • Texas long horn
  • rotating cube
  • This is not so crazy. Doing some internet searching, it appears that August Muth actually made some holographic art bolo ties that are on the secondary market! (example) (example) and more on those pages

Closely related: lenticular printing

• World3d — Lenticular printing service (both for “animations” and “stereoscopic” prints). $2500 minimum order.