anyone here remember Holos Gallery?

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Alan R
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2016 11:08 am

anyone here remember Holos Gallery?

Post by Alan R »

Anyone here remember Holos Gallery? One of the world's epicenters of display holography....San Francisco, mid-eighties - early-nineties.

My old stomping grounds. Bob H, Jeff M, John K, Lon M, Greg C, Peter M, Ron O, etc ... anyone out there?

How about......AH Prismatic, Spectore, Holographic Dimensions, The Hologram Company, Ross Books, Reconnaissance?

I'm new to the forum and I'm revisiting holography after a decade and a half in the digital world. I'm trying to catch up with history and renew some old acquaintances from the 20th century. I'm not a Facebooker, so I stumbled across this place. Hello.

Alan R
Din
Posts: 402
Joined: Thu Mar 12, 2015 4:47 pm

Re: anyone here remember Holos Gallery?

Post by Din »

Yes.I studied under Edwina Orr in England at Richmond studios in 1982. I then came to the US and met Gary at Holos. Gary put me in touch with a holographer who's name I can't recall, except that her car number plate was IC3D4U. Anyway, she then put me in touch with Peter Miller, who gave me the contact for Dan Schweitzer in New York. When I got to NY, Dan put me in touch with a number of NY holographers. When I returned to the UK, Peter Miller was at Richmond also and I was both an assistant and studied under him

In about 1989 myself and Mitch Henrion took a tour of North California and new York holographers, where we met Jason Sappan, Bob Hess, Jeff Murray (of LASER fame) etc.
Alan R wrote:Bob H
Bob's on this forum and will likely reply himself.
Alan R wrote:Jeff M
If you mean Murray, last I heard, he was living on an island off Washington state. Possible Bob has more info.
Alan R wrote:John K
Kauffmann? He's not practicing anymore, but I believe he shows up to the Holography group meeting in San Fran every February, as do Gary Z and Dan Ciffelli.
Alan R wrote:Peter M
Miller? He's head of the holography dept. at Crown Paper Products, New Jersey (stayed with him at Christmas, actually).
Alan R wrote:Ron O
He has a house in Washington, a few miles outside Seattle. We stayed with him a few years back. I believe he had something going in Las Vegas - wedding holograms, I think - but I've not heard if that's still going.
Alan R wrote:AH Prismatic, Spectore, Holographic Dimensions, The Hologram Company, Ross Books, Reconnaissance
I believe all gone. I still have the Holography Marketplace from Ross Books vols 6, 7 and 8.

I believe we have the somewhat unique distinction of having the last floating suspension table and large frame laser, though Jody Burns tells me that Ed Wesley also has a table. . We're still doing the old fashioned analogue holography, 17 years and still going!

You may or may not know that TJ died earlier this year. We had a TJ memorial celebration and then repaired to The Lantern later. Here's a picture of us. In the forefront is Sally Weber and Mellissa Crenshaw. Ed Wesley's head can just be seen and Jeff Weil is in the background. Jody Burns was there, but did not show up to the pub till later
At the Lantern.jpg
At the Lantern.jpg (106.4 KiB) Viewed 10303 times
BobH
Posts: 440
Joined: Tue Jan 06, 2015 10:26 pm
Location: Mesa, AZ

Re: anyone here remember Holos Gallery?

Post by BobH »

Great eeing you here Alan! Welcome back to Holotown. Go to the public holography page on Facebook anyway, to check up on the latest.
Alan R
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2016 11:08 am

Re: anyone here remember Holos Gallery?

Post by Alan R »

Great responses. Thanks folks! Keep those cards and letters coming......

Some questions:

1. Anyone doing holography around the Balto / DC area?
2. Is there anyplace to see holograms around the Balto / DC area (besides my basement)?
3. I've been going thru boxes and unpacking holograms (bummer...found a broken Bob H flying skull). Where is the best place to post pics so someone might identify an unknown piece? On this site? (I don't want to join FBook.)
4. What does one do with a holography collection nowadays? Does anyone buy this stuff? Is Ebay the only place to sell pieces?
5. I'm primarily a stone sculpture now, but was accepted to the HoloCenter program in Ohio to shoot an artwork with their pulsed laser -- thereby combining primitive and modern technologies. I'm excited to shoot a hologram for the first time in almost 20 years. Anyone have any feedback about that program?
6. Is the term pulse laser or pulsed laser more acceptable? I learned the latter...a pulsed laser is a laser that was made to emit pulses, hence the descriptive "ed" on the end. But I see it the other way...as a a compound noun, I guess.
7. I help run an art gallery in Balto area and was going to stage a holography show there. Anyone feel like hanging a piece once I have the logistics in place? For love, not money. It's a local art collective with a nice gallery space in Towson, MD, right outside Baltimore. We do sell stuff occasionally.

Sorry to clog this post with so many questions (some of these probably deserve their own post), but I have a decade and a half worth of stuff to catch up on.

Best regards,
Alan
BobH
Posts: 440
Joined: Tue Jan 06, 2015 10:26 pm
Location: Mesa, AZ

Re: anyone here remember Holos Gallery?

Post by BobH »

#3. Bummer! Post what you have here first.
#4. Ebay's best.
#5. Should be fun.
#6. Pulsed.
Din
Posts: 402
Joined: Thu Mar 12, 2015 4:47 pm

Re: anyone here remember Holos Gallery?

Post by Din »

BobH wrote:#6. Pulsed.
Or pulse, depending on the frequency. If it simply sends out one short burst, it's not pulsing, just flashing. I would say that display holographers use pulse lasers (one pulse, zero frequency), while the NDT people use a pulsed laser (at least two pulses). But, it's just semantics. Strictly speaking there's no such thing as a CW laser, unless it has an infinite coherence length.
Alan R wrote:Does anyone buy this stuff?
Not really. As Bob says, EBay is your best bet to buy old cr*p and hobbyists' holos. All the commercial companies have disappeared, so, as a commercial venture, display holography is pretty much dead. (I'm talking about companies that make display holos on glass/plastic, not resist holos for mass production. That particular industry is alive and well). If you're truly interested, you migh take a look at Ian's lecture at ISDH 2012 ( http://river-valley.zeeba.tv/commercial ... f-failure/ ). Apparently Ian reversed himself in the 2015 ISDH and said that holography had a bright future. I can't see his actual lecture anywhere so I don't know what he said, but I see no signs of a bright future!
BobH
Posts: 440
Joined: Tue Jan 06, 2015 10:26 pm
Location: Mesa, AZ

Re: anyone here remember Holos Gallery?

Post by BobH »

"Pulsed" and "CW" refer to the excitation mechanism, not the output beam. The first CW lasers were RF excited.
Din
Posts: 402
Joined: Thu Mar 12, 2015 4:47 pm

Re: anyone here remember Holos Gallery?

Post by Din »

BobH wrote:"Pulsed" and "CW" refer to the excitation mechanism, not the output beam. The first CW lasers were RF excited.
Yes, I know. But, the pump radiation is not "continuous", it starts when you turn on the laser and stops when you turn it off. Also, the pump radiation is also quantised, since lasing itself is a quantum phenomenon, and so, it cannot be "continuous", since continuity of any physical phenomena is essentially classical.

The problem with such strict semantics is that it very quickly leads you down a lexicographic rabbit hole. I think it's just best to accept whatever the accepted verbiage is, rather than get overly pedantic. For example LASER is an acronym, not a word per se, except that it's accepted to use it as a word. If, however, acronyms are words in and of themselves, by virtue of usage, what about AIDS (Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome) or that up-and-coming bio technique CRISPR (Clustered Regularly-Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)

This is what's playing out between those who call theses projection techniques "holography" and those (holographers) who think it's a "Pepper's Ghost". It's actually not a Pepper's Ghost because Pepper's Ghost refers to the reflection in a mirror of an actual physical object, not the projection of an image (or sequence of images) on a semi-transparent screen. If projection on a semi-transparent screen is the criteria for determining whether or not something is a "Pepper's Ghost", then every movie house in the world is showing a "Pepper's Ghost" since all media on which projections occur are semi-transparent to some extent. Alternatively, I can always back-project a scene onto a transparent screen while filming something in front of that screen, a la https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDgH_Z8438w which is either a "Pepper's Ghost" from 1948, or just a back projection. I maintain, it's simply a back-projection.

Unfortunately, some "expert" in the holographic community declared that these were "Pepper's Ghost", and the entire holographic community followed suit, Pied Piper-like. All that's been accomplished is the replacement of one unknown word, hologram, by another unknown word, Pepper's Ghost, without defining or justifying either one (except of course, by an "expert" :D !)

By the way, I used to get into a lot of these pedantic arguments when I was in college - it seemed the staple of any Physics department! - and then later during MENSA meetings - it seemed to be a staple of justifying another unknown quantity of "intelligence" whatever the heck that means!
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