Treading on the Tail of the Tiger: A Collaborative Effort in Large-Format Holography

The authors discuss the installation Alignment, whose simple elegance rests on a foundation of technical complexity. One of the fundamental components of this work is a holographic optical element 80 in high by 40 in wide. In holography, an increase in scale coupled with a demand for precise color control can escalate technical difficulties exponentially. To meet the technical, conceptual and aesthetic demands of this work, two holographic artists collaborated to develop a holographic design system that reduced the time and cost of experimentation. Many elements of this design system eventually were incorporated into an interactive, matrix-based HOE computer-design program. Using this design system, the authors exploited the technical capacity of holography to produce a work that would have been impossible in any other medium.