Pearl on TV

Pearl being interviewed on local Minsk TV.

During the HoloExpo 2011 conference in Minsk I got interviewed on TV about my work and the exhibition.  Check out this page for more information on the fantastic exhibition - if you can read Russian!

Holograms in Seoul - the Garden of Light

Typhoon 8"x10" Reflection Hologram, Pearl John, 2009

My holograms Through Sound and Typhoon (produced with Iñaki Beguiristain's help) are currently on show in The Garden of Light Exhibition, organised by Juyong Lee.

From Lithuania to Belarus

HoloExpo-2011 Installation View

In October I travelled to Minsk with artist Isabel Azevedo to take part in the HoloExpo 2011 conference.  The accompanying exhibition at the National Academy of Science of Belarus was fantastic.   Isabel and I both exhibited holograms and were interviewed by the local TV station about our work.

There were approximately 150 holograms being exhibited; the collection included display holograms, museum works and fine art holograms.  Many of the holograms were full-colour and animated.
 

Boots by Isabel Azevedo

Isabel's hologram Boots, was stunning, the silver boots kicked as you walked past them. Other works of art that I admired included Paula Dawson's 'Luminous Presence; and Martin Richardson's Over the Rainbow.

Paula Dawson's Luminous Presence 2007.

 Over the Rainbow by Martin Richardson

Isabel and Michel Grossman are shown in front of my holograms Typhoon 2009 and Through History.  

The exhibition is open to the public at the Academy until December.

Holograms in Belarus!

Thanks to an invitation from Dr. Stanislovas Zacharovas, the Director of Geola, I attended the fantastic HoloExpo 2011 conference in Belarus. I was sponsored by the conference organisers – ‘Holography Industry’ and was very grateful to be able to attend.

Stas & Ramunas Bakanas in front of the Academy

I presented a paper on the creative development of digital animated holography, "From Analogue to Digital: Fine Art in a new Medium" and exhibited a couple of my holograms in the accompanying holography exhibition at The National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

As a result I was interviewed on local TV, invited to write an article for a Russian Cinema magazine and received an invitation to the Belarus State University Physics Department to teach them about Outreach. Hurray!

Star time - 12 million seconds

The image above - produced by Dr Tony Bird an astronomer at the University of Southampton - is part of a lenticular animation which represents Tony's 'artist's impression' of two stars observed by the INTEGRAL Satellite, called 'the High-Mass X-ray Binary IGR J17391-3021', The larger object is a supergiant star orbited by a neutron star. The Supergiant emits a dense wind which has a stable disk-like structure at the equator. Although the source was discovered in 1997 by the XTE telescope, this picture is inspired by 12 million seconds of hard X-ray observations of the the system with the INTEGRAL telescope. Lenticular imaging hasn't been used to display astronomical data before - so I'm introducing it into the Physics and Astronomy department.

Moving Time - a new application for lenticulars

I'm 'embedded' in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton. I have asked members of staff from all three research groups - Quantum Light and Matter, Theory and Astronomy if I can have some data to animate which will be useful to them to use in conference posters which I don't believe has been done before. I'm hoping to get hold of some black hole data and images from LOFAR if possible to animate.

Professor Pavlos Lagoudakis has given me some data from the crossover of condensed Photons and Polaritons in microcavities to illustrate.

Images to follow...

This image shows data taken with pico-second laser pulses. I wanted to show images taken over very short time scales - and very long. from Nanotechnology to Cosmology.

3D Contour maps in Taiwan

It looks as though there is already research being done in the area of 3D mapping.  My fellow PhD research student Yin-Ren Chang in the Modern Holography Group at De Montfort has informed me that Chiang Mei-Yi a researcher in Taiwan has produced a research paper for her Master's degree entitled "The depth of spatial research in the holographic-stereo contour map".


However I don't believe anyone is looking at representing time in three-dimensions.  I hope not!

Three-dimensional data

I'm wondering whether lentular imaging can be used to display three-dimensional astronomical data effectively - for science communication purposes.  There are R-Trees - methods of displaying relationships between layers of data, which could be illustrated using lenticular imaging/digital holography.  The information is described/labelled as being either 'parent' or 'child' so different generations of data could be shown on different layers within a lenticular image.

I'm interested in using layers of space within a lenticular to represent different time periods.   The further back within the image plane the data is placed - the further back in time the data. Life cycles of stars could be shown easily using this technique - posters suitable for GCSE science students/general public.

Topographic map

I am also imagining that contour maps could be represented in three-dimensions - although the depth within in the image plane would not represent time in this instance.

And what about weather maps? Depth within the lenticular can also be used to represent pressure or temperature.  

I was introduced to the work of Eduard Tufte by Dr Phil Uttley last week who researched the graphic representation of data.  All of this is intellectually interesting, but I don't yet have any emotional attachment to it.  I would rather go back to working on three-dimensional family trees.  This is perhaps though a secondary use for my research - and an arguement that it could be considered a contribution to knowledge.

Subjectivist

Escher image taken from link:

Methodologies for a PhD Research Proposal.

I'm still working on my Methodology and (thanks to Kolb no doubt who says you have to reflect on anything to understand it p.58 Visualising Research C.Gray & J. Malins) I am having to blog on it.

Constructivist Paradigm, Subjectivist Epistomology - Inquirer and inquired are fused into a single entity.  Findings are literally the creation of the process of interaction between the two.

I'm going to need to look up Hermeneutic Dialectic - and hope that I don't have to try to say 'hermeneutic' out loud.

Methodologies

Argh!  What's my Methodology?

In C.Gray and J.Malin's Visualizing Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design  Page 19, Methodologies are described to be the 'consequence of ontology and epistemology'.  ' Methodology is evolved in awareness of what the research considers 'knowable', and in an awareness of the nature of knowledge and the relationship between the researcher and the 'knowable'.

The way I understand this is that the classical scientific method for understanding the universe would have been positivist.  That is - reality exists 'out there' (p.20),  the scientist would be distant and the work experimental and objective.

However this positivist epistomology (the nature of the relationship between the inquirer and the 'knowable') must have must have been severely shaken with the discovery of Quantum Mechanics and that the observer of an experiment can affect what is being observed.  I've taken the illustrations below from a wonderful Blog entitled 'Quantum Art and Poetry'.  Friday, 27 March 2009 which explains how the observer effects interference and the theory of Quantum Entanglement.

I'm going to have to ask a Physicist for help understanding this one, because I'll get it wrong.  

Back to my methodology.  My belief about my ontology (The nature of reality, the 'knowable') is that my paradigm of inquiry is somewhere between Critical Realist (believing that reality exists, but can never be fully apprehended - it is driven by natural laws that can only be incompletely understood) and  Relativist which suggests that realities exist in the form of multiple mental constructions, socially and experimentally based, local and specific, dependent for their form and content on the persons who hold them.

My Methodologies for those two paradigms would be either dialogic (and involve eliminating false consciousness and energise and facilitate transformation) or hermeneutic, dialectic (individual constructions are elicited and refined hermeneutically, and compared and contrasted dialectically, with the aim of generating one (or a few) constructions on which there is a substantial consensus).

What does that mean?  I say that I'm wanting to represent life more authentically by using time in three dimensions within holography and lenticular imaging.  What does that mean in terms of an artistic methodology? How do I determine what 'authentic' means?  Would I have to design some sort of questionnaire to evaluate whether I'm being more or less authentic - and ask lots of people?  Yikes.  I know I do not want to use any sort methodology which isn't familiar, or relevant, so I definately have to refine my research question.  Sigh.  A very smart Phd Physics student told me he spent much of his time during his PhD feeling stupid...