Look there. Mike Ditka`s Super Bowl ring is waiting to be touched. But reach out to stroke that hard-won jewelry and-wait a minute-your hand moves right through the ring and the coach`s hand to rest upon a piece of ordinary glass.
Correction. Extraordinary glass. This piece, 12 by 16 inches, had been treated with chemicals and slipped into a specially designed camera in a studio in Evanston to produce a special effect-the newest thing in picture-taking-an image-plane holographic portrait. In an image-plane hologram, the image appears to be in front of as well as in back of the glass.
Three-dimensional holograms have been on the scene for a number of years- their uses ranging from attention-getters in product packaging to medical diagnostic tools. And now, within the last several months, the founders of Holicon-three Northwestern University professors and a marketing expert-have geared up to provide the idea with another facet, traditional portraiture.
The holographic portrait of the Bears` coach hangs in his restaurant. Other portraits hang in their subjects` homes and in the lobbies of corporations. Not all Holicon`s subjects have been people, and not all their holograms are of the image-plane variety. Items such as a tropical fish aquarium and a milk carton in three views have been recorded as Denisyuk holograms, produced by a faster development process than that involved in finishing an image-plane hologram. In a Denisyuk hologram, the image is entirely behind the glass plate.
LASER TECH
Michel Marhic, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at NU and one of Holicon`s partners, said, ”All this really started with the laser about 25 years ago. At Northwestern we began working with the biomedical applications of holography about seven years ago.”
Two years ago, Hans Bjelkhagen joined the NU faculty. Associate professor of biomedical engineering, Bjelkhagen had been involved in Sweden, his homeland, with holographic portraiture for several years. In April, 1986, he, Marhic and Dr. Max Epstein, another biomedical engineering professor, teamed up with Gary Lawrence to form Holicon. Their office and studio are in the Technology Innovation Center, a joint operation between NU and the City of Evanston to promote new high-tech companies.
So much for the dry facts. The magic of their operation is performed in their studio, which is equipped with a barbershop-type chair and an arrangement of dark draperies.
”This was designed with the customer in mind,” Marhic said. ”I believe it`s the first in the country. It`s not just an optics lab where you bring somebody in and rig things up to make a portrait. The main thing here is that you don`t notice the laser.”
The laser equipment and its power supply are in an adjacent room, unseen by the subject. After the holographers and their client determine the styling of the portrait, a makeup artist prepares the subject for the session. The person then takes a seat in the studio chair, which, in effect, is in the camera.
”The subject is between the recording medium, the film and what is the lens,” Lawrence explained. ”Actually, we don`t have a lens. We are
(connected) right to the film.” (Actually, they don`t use film for these portraits. No doubt they will some time in the future, but right now the subject sits in semi-darkness in front of a treated glass plate the actual size of the portrait.)
SAY `CHEESE`
”When everything is set,” Marhic said, ”we fire the laser (by remote control from the studio) and its red beam comes out in two parts through an opening in the wall beside the subject; one part, as diffused light, hits a mirror and becomes the illumination light that is then sent in the direction of the face of the subect. The other half of the beam comes straight through another hole, hits another mirror above the subject, comes down at a 45-degree angle above the person`s head and hits the holographic plate directly.
”A hologram is recorded simply by the summation, if you like, of this so-called reference light and the light that is reflected from the person. So, in darkness, or rather with some green light as background, we slip the plate into the form, tell the person to smile, fire the laser that exposes the plate and then take it next door to the lab to process it with essentially standard photographic chemistry.”
”When the red button is pushed in the studio, the laser light goes off at 20 billionths of a second,” Lawrence said. ”It`s very low diffusion, less intense even than a flash on a regular camera. It`s so fast, you can wave or do anything you want here-moving, fidgeting-it`s still going to record the images in stop action.”
The glass, they explain, is there merely to support the holographic emulsion, the recording medium, which is only seven-millionths of a millimeter thick. It`s similar to the early days of conventional photography, and yet it`s high-tech as well. In a way, a hologram records light patterns as audio tape records sound patterns.
(According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the image on the holographic plate bears no resemblance to the object photographed, but a pattern of stripes and whorls called interference fringes formed on the plate contains all the optical information of the object being photographed.)
SATISFACTION GUARANTEED
At Holicon, processing of what is called the master plate takes about one hour. If the person is not satisfied, another portrait is taken. When the customer has made a selection, a master is processed that can be viewed only through a laser light. The master is sent to Sweden where additional processing allows it to be viewed with a standard spotlight. The studio appointment requires 1 1/2 to 2 hours. The developing procedure takes two to three weeks.
Because the laser is red, the color of the subject`s face and other skin surfaces appear orange in a holographic portrait. At the moment, this is the more advantageous of two available colors. The other is yellow, which produces certain unappealing green areas.
These portraits are expensive-$3,800 for the first holograph, framed in black metal ($4,500 for two people in one portrait), $800 per copy (copies of some holographic subjects could be reproduced in large numbers, which would substantially reduce the price per copy).
With the high portrait fee comes V.I.P. treatment: limousine service within the Chicago area, catered food, phone calls made for the subject, etc. Travel arrangements also are part of the service, because it`s necessary for the subject to go to the Evanston studio. The laser isn`t portable.
MANY-SIDED DITKA
The finished product is a portrait that gives a different view of the person from every forward angle. Stand before the Ditka portrait and see his face resting on his chin. Look at it from the side and see more of his thumb and the tie under his hand. In the milk carton holograph, three images were incorporated, left to right, to show the carton closed, being opened and open. As technology develops and larger plates become available, holographic portraits might include entire groups of people. Viewed with a laser light, a portrait of the Playboy Playmate of the Year, Donna Edmundson, showed that the camera had recorded her entire body. Looking into the portrait-as one would look into a room through a window-the viewer can see her bathing suit, her legs and feet. But this type of view is unavailable under standard lighting. That will have to wait a while. And at the moment, the maximum number permitted for a portrait is two people.
Dreaming is unlimited, however, for the founders of Holicon. They dream, for example, about museums in the future recording their treasures with holography and then showing the holographic portraits in schools. They dream about the possibility of holographic portraits as fund-raising devices for non-profit organizations. They dream about full-color portraits. The technology is developing. The future is out there, rife with possibilities.
Holicon`s founders are a mini-United Nations aggregation. Marhic was born in France; Bjelkhagen in Sweden; Epstein in Poland (He later lived in Israel), and Lawrence the United States. Now, in a Chicago suburb, they stand at the edge of holographic portraiture, wondering what they will discover as they look at it from the front, from either side and finally begin looking down, down into its depth. They may find a wonderland inside that glass. –
