The Beginning



Until the summer of 2023 like most people I was barely aware of the existence of holography as a field. To the extent that I thought of it at all, I thought of the low quality holograms from the 80's and 90's I'd seen as a kid (perhaps they weren't even holograms, they could have been low quality lenticular sheets).

This all changed in June 2023, when my friend Sydney Koke visited me in Taiwan on her way to a conference in Korea. Since Taiwan at that time of year is hot enough to kill, I struggled to think of how I could show her the island. Fortunately, Sydney had developed a new passion since we had last seen each other - holography (indeed, this is what the conference was about). It was decided that since it was too hot to go outside, we would simply make analog holograms in my apartment.

Sydney gave me a shopping list of items to procure - a low cost green laser, photoemulsion film, black velvet, plenty of small picture frames, etc. Since I don't have a darkroom in my apartment, we simply worked at night. Our most successful one, made using one of my 3D prints, is shown here:



Sydney's enthuasism was so infectious that I ended up going to the holography conference (ISDH 2023) as well. The quality of the holograms I saw there astonished me, and when I learnt that one could use digital holography to make holograms of objects that exist only within the confines of your computer, I quickly realized that this could be the ideal artistic medium for mathematical objects not conducive to 3D printing. I was hooked.