It’s an art that can turn a woman turn into a tiger — not metaphorically, though. At the MIT museum in Cambridge, however, holography helps the woman’s or tiger’s cause — depending on whose side you wish to take — by using a holographic image to create a ‘Tigirl’.
I visited the MIT Museum today, and other than the robots (got to download a NXT-G programming environment and make a robot do some basic antics), the Aritificial Intelligence demos, the explanation of how one’s DNA can be damaged and repaired too (with the help of digital demos and LEGO DNA kits), what caught my attention were the holographic (3D) images.
Here’s my first video:
They offer a lesson in physics. Consider this. You must have seen the holograms on your driver’s license, ID card or credit card. They’re also part of CD, DVD and software packages. These holograms make forgery difficult but they still look flat and green and do not provide the ‘3D look’. However, large-scale holograms — when illuminated with lasers or displayed in a darkened room with carefully directed lighting — look stunning. They’re two-dimensional surfaces that show absolutely precise, three-dimensional images of real objects. You don’t have to wear special glasses or look through a View-Master to see the images in 3-D. They simply leap at you like the ‘Tigril’.
If you cut a hologram in half, each half contains whole views of the entire holographic image. The same is true if you cut out a small piece -- even a tiny fragment will still contain the whole picture. Moreover, if you make a hologram of a magnifying glass, the holographic version will magnify the other objects in the hologram, just like a real one.
So what’s ‘Holography’? It denotes the techniques and tools of capturing and replaying 3D light information that reflects from illuminated objects. In the making of a hologram, one laser beam is split into two – the reference beam and the object beam – and both meet on the holographic film where an interference pattern is recorded. Projecting laser light, or ordinary white light (depending on the type of hologram), back through the film “structures” the light in just the way it originally reflected from the object. The eye sees the original subject in three dimensions even though the material object is no longer present.
There are two basic categories of holograms — transmission and reflection. Transmission holograms create a 3-D image when monochromatic light, or light that is all one wavelength, travels through them. Reflection holograms create a 3-D image when laser light or white light reflects off of their surface.
Technical applications are represented by holograms used in medicine, engineering, architecture, and retailing. A holographic architectural model shows how an architect can realise a space in three-dimensions before a project is built. A holographic image made of the remains of the 2000-year-old Lindow Man, discovered in a bog in England, demonstrates the use of holography for anthropological, educational, and archival purposes.
The museum collection contains works representing the artistic and technical evolution of the medium, created by some of the world’s foremost holographers. Today the MIT Museum has the largest and most comprehensive collection of holograms in the world. Historic holograms in the collection include the first reflection holograms, the first laser transmission hologram, and the first white light transmission hologram, created by MIT Professor Stephen Benton, a pioneer in the field of holography and 3-D imaging.
The full range of artistic possibility is apparent in the works of such internationally-recognised holographers as Margaret Benyon, Rudie Berkhout, Harriet Casdin-Silver, Melissa Crenshaw, Setsuko Ishii, John Kaufman, Sam Moree, and Dan Schweitzer.
Incidentally, the MIT 150 Exhibition opens formally next January 7– a kickoff event for the Institute’s sesquicentennial celebrations. That date is less than eight months away, and work is full swing. There will be many events to mark the occasion and I look forward to an exciting spring offering.
