INSTALLATION NOTE:

This work is to be installed on a plinth in a glass cube where the glass plate acts as beamsplitter in the creation in the otherwise bare and dark exhibition room of this living interactive ambience of insterference contours as per the classic design of a Michelson Interferometer.

ARTIST'S CURATING STATEMENT - INSTALLATION VERSION:

Excerpted from WAVEFRONT Issue Fall 1986
AN AVANT-GARDE FOR HOLOGRAPHY BY WAY OF NEMESIS - by AL RAZUTIS

"Allegory of the Missing Object

Imagine walking into a darkened gallery space and perceiving only an optical configuration featuring a laser, beam splitter, lenses and the combined beams of a Michelson interferometer. The "object" in this case is the room ambience containing you, who "creates" the changes in the projected fringe pattern. A site-specific installation which could contain a hologram if it were deemed necessary to insert a photographic plate in the path of the combined beams.

Now further imagine being confronted by an image, or a condition alluding to an image, that speaks to you conceptually about the absence of the hologram but requires you to conceptually recreate this absent object. The stories this art would have you tell would reflect on your own conception and anticipation of holographic art and in a manner where reconceptualization is pre-eminent over art appreciation."

"All things in our universe are constantly in motion, vibrating. Even objects that appear to be stationary are in fact vibrating, oscillating, resonating, at various frequencies. Resonance is a type of motion, characterized by oscillation between two states. And ultimately all matter is just vibrations of various underlying fields."
-- 'A New Theory of Consciousness', Tam Hunt, Scientific American, 2018

The use of interferometry to create holographic art:

"Interferometry is typically employed by scientists and engineers in 'non-destructive testing' of various materials to detect 'flaws'. It was of interest to me as a tool to create a 'visual music' by superimposing two states in time, one 'at rest' and one 'tuned' by me with a preciseness gleamed from several years of experimentation.

It is also a technique for 'visualizing' the interference of wavefronts of light from two states of materials, or two sources of coherent light, and which I term 'disturbances in time'. I call it visual 'music' because the process is directly related to 'tuning an instrument and playing it' and creating a 'harmony' that is propagated visually (holographically) and is seen as a combination of interfering waves and wave-fronts. And it is pleasing to the eye. I call it 'art' because this process and this work is 'as artistic as music can be', as art of the viewing and holographically recording interfering 'waves in space' can be, and because it was intended as art by me, not an experiment in engineering, or an accident in holography.

CONCEPT: This interferometric holographic work is based on the very concept of 'holography', its nature and its unique form of expression of space and 'disturbance in time'.

PROCESS: The two 'points' (or poles of disturbance) in 'Field' are superimposed in time, and the interferometric holograms, rendered as a white-light 'rainbow' (H2) hologram (framed above) using S. Benton techniques, were done with manual precision (the twisting of a screw at a time) for the tuning that was required in my imagined result. To me these are creations in 'the tuning of disturbances' in time and in space.

EXHIBITION: This work can be exhibited as a rear-lit or front-lit (with mirror back) 'white-light transmission' (Rainbow) hologram, in one or both modes: a suspended hanging plate, a wall-hanging (mirror-backed mode). Its preferred mode of exhibition is as a 'sculpture', a cube or cuboid of glass with hologram inclined at approx. 45 degrees and back-lit with point-source white light. The sculptural presentation more directly presents the 'spatial characteristics' of the interfering 'contour lines' and the 'mixing' of colors and forms of the two 'sources'/hologram masters which comprise the work." (Al Razutis)

Illustrated text on interferometric holograms by Razutis: contour.html.

Special Techniques Employed in Stress Topography:

Time-averaged interferograms were holographically mastered as H1 recordings with double-exposed CW laser illumination. These are termed 'interferometric hologram masters'. In these masters, two distinct states in time were recorded as superimpositions (double exposure). These distinct states featured mechanically induced (stress) contour patterns of interference fringes of surface displacement on either stainless steel plate (Field), stainless steel wedge (Inclined/stressed/plane, (Incline), or aluminum channel (Channel 1, Channel 2).

The resulting (H2) copy of the master (H1), as edition of four, were created with 'rainbow' (S. Benton) techniques for white-light illumination. Single, two and three-channel imaging and color technique were calculated and employed in H2 transfers by Razutis.

Illustrated text on interferometric holograms by Razutis: contour.html.