Holography and New Media

Sarah Maline
Farmington, ME USA
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Since its inception as a display medium, holography has navigated a confusing channel through traditional and contemporary visual languages in art. Holography is unusual and frequently confounding in its ability to access a number of medium-based aesthetic dialogues–those of cinema, video, photography, installation, sculpture and painting. The medium’s surprising and delightful formal properties and complex relationship to other mediums have often overshadowed the significant conceptual content of holographic works. This paper looks at the ways in which ways the multiple, often simultaneous visual languages of holography continue to pose challenges in exhibition and criticism for both holographers and curators. What strategies can holographers and curators employ to encourage the exhibition of holography and foster a contemporary critical response? Further, now that new-media aesthetics and criticism are ascendant, and have begun address many of the critical questions that have confronted holography over the past 40 years, in what ways can holography today engage and find a place in new-media discourse?