Crystal beginnings: constellations of holography

SPIE is an international technical society conference dedicated to advancing engineering and scientific applications of optical, photonic, imaging, electronic and optoelectronic technologies. The conference in which this paper was delivered consisted of the worlds leading holographic experts – scientists, engineers and artists, interested in advancing the technology. This formed the ideal platform to gather crucial information regarding the future of holography and significantly – Its future - illustrated in the form of three-dimensional mind maps. This paper combined a question and answer section which asked questions such as ‘What current application of holography are you working on?’ and ‘When do you predict it will become available within design practice?” The aim was to develop my argument that future design processes will need methods of three-dimensional print requiring timeliness of response, flexibility, access to information and fully rendered digital holograms on demand especially for digital holography. These characteristics imply a more geographically distributed and collaborative kind of information dissemination activity than is commonplace today as a complex network of 3D CAD designers are already in place and primed for holographic exploitation. The papers was titled after the late Professor Steven Benton’s hologram, “Crystal Beginnings” because its design fits many of the criteria that satisfy our visual needs, therefore making it the ideal starting reference point in our attempts to clarify design issues many 3D Cad designers face with new holographic technology. Its design comes close to the idea of a ‘three-dimensional mind map’ which could help to define key research issues associated with digital convergence and this is also explored in the paper. The logical conclusions and results form another paper titled “Crystal Beginnings: II” to be presented at SPIE conference in 2008