Part 2: HOLOGRAPHIC POETRY
Holography was born in 1948 when the Hungarian scientist Dennis
Gabor (later Nobel Prize of Physics), trying to improve the range of the
electronic microscope, devised the possibility of three-dimensional
reproduction. Only after the invention of the laser (Light Amplification by
Stimulated Emission of Radiation) the North Americans E.Leith and J.Upatnieks
and the Russian Y.Denisyuk achieved the first three-dimensional holographic
images (holos=everything). The holographic image not only transmits the visual
characteristics of the objects but, also, their
spatiality.
This occurs because the hologram indicates each point of the object' surface
showing them at the same time from several points of view. On the other hand
the hologram is conditioned by binocular parallax and, also, by the relative
position of the spectator with regard to it. For this reason to create poetic
texts, luminously structured in space, honors the human physiology much more
than those written in a bidimensional space, since it takes advantage of
binocular vision and the mental powers associated with the perception of
objects, not in a plane, but in space.
Also, orbital, ellipsoidal, curved, etc. syntaxes could be configured
necessarily, in order with what we have said above in the creative
process, that break with the monoscopic tradition of poetry. As we will already
find out, virtual poetry is not so far from this achievement. As an unavoidable
complement we present here some important paragraphs of the text
"Holographic Poetry: 3 Dimensions of the Verbal Sign" by
Eduardo Kac, included in the catalog of the VII National Salon of Visual
Arts, 1984, Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil:
Holographic images could be virtual (behind the hologram) or real (in
front of the hologram); or still, part real, part virtual, as if the
holographic film would section the image. This allows that the reader could
open a book of holographic poems and that the very poem fluctuate in the air at
50 centimeters of distance from the page. Moreover, the hologram could be
printed in large inexpensive editions, and for this reason will be,
undoubtedly, the printing method of the future.
At the moment of the poem's conception, the poet should study all the
combining possibilities among letters (three-dimensional objects) and angles of
vision of the spectator (parallax) that are organized vertically and
horizontally. That is to say, the layout of a hologram is constituted with the
formulation of the diverse ways of perception the spectator will have, keeping
in mind the degree of the hologram's parallax.
In this sense a new visual syntax arises that, in opposition to
Mallarmé's white, articulates the poem starting from invisible volumes,
three-dimensional black holes. It is for this reason that the poem acquires
independence from the support and, thinking in terms of real image, permits
that the spectator move the hand between the page and its holographic
projection. I say "spectator" instead of "reader" because
the poem generates an unusual perceptual decoding. The poet neither
"writes", but
creates
the design, sculpts the die and makes the hologram of the object. Instead of
the pen or the typewriter or the Letraset, the laser.
Even faced with the evidence, there are critics that reject systematically
the electronic art and who believe that holography is merely an idiom. But the
poet of the XXI century elaborates a holographic language and inquires. What
he/she wants nobody knows. Poetry is a three-dimensional enigma.
padin3