It would appear to me to make more sense to categorize future Holoforum topics as:
Step 1: H1 (mastering) which would include image composition and lighting
and Step 2: H2 (image planing) to include beam rationing, photochemistry and processing.
As a very active (and upbeat) display holographer I am chagrined to see this itteration of the Holoforum (as was its predecessor) totally dominated by discussions regarding technical nuances and absolutely void of discourse regarding the much larger issues of image composition, lighting, and presentation.
As anyone who is in the business of producing holography for public consumption should be aware, the Step 2/H2 issues comprise 90% of what the art-consuming public gives even a tiny s***-about.
I am often reminding my peers in holography that almost no one (outside of the tiny-bordering-on-miniscule sphere of readers herein) cares one iota about anything other than the images presented and their visual impact.
A Different View
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Tony
A Different View
Most of us are hobbiest just doing this sort of thing at home and not looking to make money. I for one am not an artist although I wish I could devote more time in trying to create art. I make DCG holograms to make me happy and not the general public. Even crappy ones with poor content can still trill me when they show off some interesting color.
I do agree that art should be discussed but it is difficult here for a couple of reasons IMO.
1) It is subjective to the viewer and therefore hard to judge. Holograms as a technical side is easier to say "that it is noisey or is not bright enough, has wood grain etc".
2) We only have gallery that is limited to a photo maybe a video. Tough to get a full impact of a hologram that way.
During the last contest, Bob Hess made a really cool hologram of a crack in his garage. It was hard to appreciate unless you saw the hologram set up the way he has it. I've seen it and it is a great piece. It is interactive which helps in its presentation. It could also only be fully appreciated by a holographer since the spider that is visable had to stay still for the whole duration of the exposure.
I do agree that art should be discussed but it is difficult here for a couple of reasons IMO.
1) It is subjective to the viewer and therefore hard to judge. Holograms as a technical side is easier to say "that it is noisey or is not bright enough, has wood grain etc".
2) We only have gallery that is limited to a photo maybe a video. Tough to get a full impact of a hologram that way.
During the last contest, Bob Hess made a really cool hologram of a crack in his garage. It was hard to appreciate unless you saw the hologram set up the way he has it. I've seen it and it is a great piece. It is interactive which helps in its presentation. It could also only be fully appreciated by a holographer since the spider that is visable had to stay still for the whole duration of the exposure.
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Joe Farina
- Posts: 805
- Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2015 2:10 pm
A Different View
We do hear, very often in fact, that art is subjective. But someone once offered a different view on the subject, one that I've since adopted: Art is objective, there is no equality in art, and art is either good or bad in varying degrees. It's not subjectively good or bad, but objectively or inherently so. For example, if someone perceives good art as being bad, it's not the fault of the art, but the fault of the person who is unable to recognize it as being good.Tony wrote:I do agree that art should be discussed but it is difficult here for a couple of reasons IMO.
1) It is subjective to the viewer and therefore hard to judge.
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holorefugee
A Different View
This is of course true. However, the other issues do need to be understood, much like the ingredients of oil paints are only of interest to painters but must be understood.I am often reminding my peers in holography that almost no one (outside of the tiny-bordering-on-minuscule sphere of readers herein) cares one iota about anything other than the images presented and their visual impact.
While holography is a small forum. The Appreciation of Art Holography would be a much smaller forum.
A Different View
wow you sound like myself, yeas i agree, the same tools use by the pro photographer can be applied to holography and a good understanding of them makes a better holographer, I was a photographer before i dived into holography, and still teach all aspects of photography and try to apply them to holography in lighting and composition.ron olson wrote:It would appear to me to make more sense to categorize future Holoforum topics as:
Step 1: H1 (mastering) which would include image composition and lighting
and Step 2: H2 (image planing) to include beam rationing, photochemistry and processing.
As a very active (and upbeat) display holographer I am chagrined to see this itteration of the Holoforum (as was its predecessor) totally dominated by discussions regarding technical nuances and absolutely void of discourse regarding the much larger issues of image composition, lighting, and presentation.
As anyone who is in the business of producing holography for public consumption should be aware, the Step 2/H2 issues comprise 90% of what the art-consuming public gives even a tiny s***-about.
I am often reminding my peers in holography that almost no one (outside of the tiny-bordering-on-miniscule sphere of readers herein) cares one iota about anything other than the images presented and their visual impact.
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Tony
A Different View
If this were true then holography art would be much more in the main stream then it is. There are plenty of incredible holograms out there that are simply amazing (August Muth etc) and that is rarely seen or heard of. Personally I think there is a lot of "group think" It is neither good or bad just is.Joe Farina wrote:We do hear, very often in fact, that art is subjective. But someone once offered a different view on the subject, one that I've since adopted: Art is objective, there is no equality in art, and art is either good or bad in varying degrees. It's not subjectively good or bad, but objectively or inherently so. For example, if someone perceives good art as being bad, it's not the fault of the art, but the fault of the person who is unable to recognize it as being good
Honestly I agree with art as being a good topic. There are web sites were you can submit a photograph and people will comment on its composition, lighting artistic impact etc. All I'm saying it might be difficult here. If some one has an idea on how to accomplish this then I'm all for it. I would love feedback on my stuff especially by the pros. Dave is suggesting a contest that normally includes art as one of the catagories, we've seen how many entries there were, and I understand why folks might be hesitate in doing this.
Not an easy nut to crack but good that it gets talked about.
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Dinesh
A Different View
Personally, I think holography stands on three legs: "technical", "process-oriented" and "art".
For myself, I definitely stand in the "technical" class. I think of holography from the point of view of the fringes. In a lot of my work, I'm asked to create specific optical functions with holography and I attack the problem by asking, "What sort of fringe structure would create that particualar form of optical output?" So, if I'm doing a solar concentrator, collimated white light from the sun needs to be converted to a narrow band converging wavefront. Hence the planes nned to be shaped like a series of inverted cones. Then I fashion my two beams to create that kind of fringe structure. So, to me, holography is: light in -> black box (hologram) -> light out. It's a sort of systems view, like electronics: signal in -> Black box (s/ware and h/ware) -> signal out. I also do a lot of mathematical modelling of holography. I've made some passably OK image holograms, but most of the subject matter is more Joy (wifey, to them that don't know Joy) than me.
I think that a lot of people on the forum probably in the second category, which I call "process-oriented". In this view, the process is all-important and the end result of successfully following the process (or altering it) results in a satisfying image . Hence Tony's remark:
The third category, "Art", is the one have the most difficulty with. What is Art? In my thirty odd years of holography, the artists have been saying that the "fine art" community never seems to recognise holography as a fine art. Yet, in many cases, the "art" of holography seems to a simple extrapolation of a common object or scene into the third dimension. It seems to me that there must be more to art than simply taking a fish tank and recording it in 3D. If art is the evocation of some form of emotional interaction with the art piece, then I have to say that I rarely get the same feeling from an art hologram that I get while listening to a good piece of music, or reading a good book or looking at a dramatic painting. Perhaps other do. Perhaps the artists think that the very fact that the piece is in 3d is enough to evoke some form of emotion. I think this may have been true in the 80's, but today when we're surrounded with "3D" (yes, I know, they aren't really holograms, but do the teeming masses care?), then 3d, in and of itself, may be becoming banal. I once heard an artist describe art as whatever it is that, when you interact with it, must grab you by the throat or grab you by a more personal part. If this is what art is, then the only holograms that I've seen that accomplish this are Ron's, Rudy's and some of Margaret Benyon's.
I'm not saying that these are absolute barriers, because I know the barriers are porous. But, I do think that the majority of holographers fall mostly in these three categories.
For myself, I definitely stand in the "technical" class. I think of holography from the point of view of the fringes. In a lot of my work, I'm asked to create specific optical functions with holography and I attack the problem by asking, "What sort of fringe structure would create that particualar form of optical output?" So, if I'm doing a solar concentrator, collimated white light from the sun needs to be converted to a narrow band converging wavefront. Hence the planes nned to be shaped like a series of inverted cones. Then I fashion my two beams to create that kind of fringe structure. So, to me, holography is: light in -> black box (hologram) -> light out. It's a sort of systems view, like electronics: signal in -> Black box (s/ware and h/ware) -> signal out. I also do a lot of mathematical modelling of holography. I've made some passably OK image holograms, but most of the subject matter is more Joy (wifey, to them that don't know Joy) than me.
I think that a lot of people on the forum probably in the second category, which I call "process-oriented". In this view, the process is all-important and the end result of successfully following the process (or altering it) results in a satisfying image . Hence Tony's remark:
Sometimes, it seems to me, the process is so consuming that actual images are rarely produced; instead there is a sort of infinitely regressive tuning of the process to finer and finer levels. Perhaps the early holographers fell into this class, resulting the cliches of skulls and chess pieces. After all, if the process is the important thing, the object to be forever enshrined in the fringes have only a subsidiary value.Tony wrote:I make DCG holograms to make me happy and not the general public. Even crappy ones with poor content can still trill me when they show off some interesting color.
The third category, "Art", is the one have the most difficulty with. What is Art? In my thirty odd years of holography, the artists have been saying that the "fine art" community never seems to recognise holography as a fine art. Yet, in many cases, the "art" of holography seems to a simple extrapolation of a common object or scene into the third dimension. It seems to me that there must be more to art than simply taking a fish tank and recording it in 3D. If art is the evocation of some form of emotional interaction with the art piece, then I have to say that I rarely get the same feeling from an art hologram that I get while listening to a good piece of music, or reading a good book or looking at a dramatic painting. Perhaps other do. Perhaps the artists think that the very fact that the piece is in 3d is enough to evoke some form of emotion. I think this may have been true in the 80's, but today when we're surrounded with "3D" (yes, I know, they aren't really holograms, but do the teeming masses care?), then 3d, in and of itself, may be becoming banal. I once heard an artist describe art as whatever it is that, when you interact with it, must grab you by the throat or grab you by a more personal part. If this is what art is, then the only holograms that I've seen that accomplish this are Ron's, Rudy's and some of Margaret Benyon's.
I'm not saying that these are absolute barriers, because I know the barriers are porous. But, I do think that the majority of holographers fall mostly in these three categories.