However, associated optically with the virtual image is what's known as the real image, which comes to focus on the side of the film nearest to the viewer. All that would be required to see the real image is a special optical system to reverse the holographic process. This system does not yet exist; but it seems that a technique known to the ancient Egyptians and practiced by magicians for centuries may provide the means for a future system of large-scale, real-image holographic movie theatres.
Known generally as "The Illusion of the Rose in the Vase," this simple process involves the use of a lens, concave mirror, and pinhole light source to transpose illusionistically an object into three-dimensional space in full color. In addition to floating an image in space, it can be used to magnify or miniaturize the image. As in the archetypal example, it can cause a natural-sized object like a rose to appear suddenly in an otherwise empty vase. Through a system of lenses and mirrors an object at another location can be suspended in space wherever desired.
In Japan this process is used to project tiny three-dimensional human beings onto the miniature stage of a puppet theatre: the actual persons are beneath the stage floor, dancing in front of a large mirror. Before we had holography an actual object was needed to create this effect, but now that we have three-dimensional images without three-dimensional objects it is possible to develop a system of holographic cinema based on this ancient concept. The object is simply replaced by a strip of holographic film. Even then, however, the scene would be visible only to an audience of two hundred persons.
"If you get into an area much larger than that," explains Dr. Wuerker, "you confront the problem of what is and what isn't 3-D. You don't see much 3-D beyond twenty or thirty feet, so the effect would be lost if you had to sit very far away from the image. Either you'll have a projected image that's like a person on a stage where about a hundred people can observe him, or you'll have a personalized box like a TV set, or a hood over your head."
Wuerker also conceives of a holographic cylinder that would either revolve slowly or remain stationary while the audience rotated around it. "But now comes the reality," he warns. "And the reality obviously is a cylinder, so you're limited in your stage area. It wouldn't be much more than just one man. But you could have an interview with that man." Holographic movies may be severely limited by their total dependence on reality, Dr. Wuerker suggests. "When you make a movie, the cameraman focuses the camera. He forces you to look at this actor or this scene or whatever. In a holographic movie you don't have that. Your own eyes are the lens, just as in reality.
"For example, if you had two actors, one upstage, the other downstage, you'd focus on whichever one you wanted to. When the focusing is up to the viewer you're simulating reality even more closely; in fact as far as the viewer's concerned it is reality. But holograms can't be doctored once the image is on the film. You can't touch it up or edit. You can synthesize, and you can superimpose and you can multiplex, but you can't play with focusing as you can in photography. And you might find that in holographic movies things like jump cuts are not likely."
Dr. Wuerker also envisions cube holograms instead of plates or film strips. "You can use a thick medium rather than a thin medium. Someone will develop a glass block that is photosensitive, about a quarter of an inch thick. You coat this glass box holographically, putting a hundred images on it. You hold it up to a laser and as you rotate it your separate images will come out. You couldn't pack information any tighter than you could this way. This is definitely in the future and definitely in the viewing of movies. Holographic recording itself is at this point already. But if you compound that by using depth in your plate as a third dimension— you have a thousand lines per millimeter so every cubic millimeter will have 10 9 bits of information. And there you go. But still you won't be able to pull the tricks that are in movies or on TV because holography is too dependent on actuality."
The Kinoform:
Computer-Generated Holographic Movies
However, means have been devised through which even the hologram may no longer need "reality" to exist. Dr. Lou Lesem and his associates at IBM in Houston have developed methods of generating three-dimensional holographic images digitally through computers. Using an IBM Model 360-44, Dr. Lesem calculated the pattern in which a laser's light waves would be scattered if they actually struck the simulated object. A computer-controlled laser interference system is then used to create this pattern on plates or film. The resulting image is called a kinoform.
"When they learn to perfect this system," said Dr. Jacobson, "you'll be able to make holograms as abstract as you can with conventional cinema. You could have a three-dimensional computer-generated holographic movie of the Stargate Corridor in 2001. I don't think that's any further off than any of these other things. In fact it's probably closer. We might even be able to do it now."
Moreover, the ability of holography to record natural phenomena that exist beyond the range of human perception— shockwaves, electrical vibrations, ultraslow-motion events— could contribute to an experience of nonordinary realities totally beyond the reach of conventional cinema or television. And the most likely mode of viewing will be the individualized frame or enclosure. "The difference between the window frame and the movie frame," observes Dr. Wuerker, "is that you can get your face up so close that the frame disappears and all you're seeing is the illusionistic world on the other side. You're in it."
Technoanarchy: The Open Empire
"In another moment Alice was through the glass and had jumped lightly down into the looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. 'So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room,' thought Alice, 'warmer in fact, because there'll be no one to scold me away from the fire.'"
LEWIS CARROLL
John Cage tells the story of an international conference of philosophers in Hawaii on the subject of Reality. For three days Daisetz Suzuki said nothing. Finally the chairman turned to him and asked, "Dr. Suzuki, would you say this table around which we are sitting is real?" Suzuki raised his head and said yes. The chairman asked in what sense Suzuki thought the table was real. Suzuki said, "In every sense."3 The wise thinker is a true realist; he might well have been talking about the future of cinema.
I've attempted to bring the past, present, and future of the movies together in one image so that a vast metamorphosis might be revealed. One can no longer speak of art without speaking of science and technology. It is no longer possible to discuss physical phenomena without also embracing metaphysical realities. The communications of humanity obviously are trending toward that future point at which virtually all information will be spontaneously available and copyable at the individual level; beyond that a vast transformation must occur. Today when one speaks of cinema one implies a metamorphosis in human perception.
This transformation is being realized on the personal level as well as on the global front of the industrial equation itself, where it can be realized only through the synergetic efforts of all men applying all disciplines. While personal films, videotapes, and light shows will continue to expand human communication on one level, organizations such as PULSA at Yale University, and the various national chapters of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) are suffusing art, science, and the eco-system of earth itself at that point where all converge within the purview of modern technology.