Folding Spaces, Unfolding Action
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Mrongovius, Martina
This paper describes my practice of installing holograms in unusual spaces. From this work I look at how viewer movement can be activated by the holographic image and the role that this plays in reading that image. The holographic images I create are multiplexed either with hand cut stencils or stereographic printing systems. The imagery captures experiences, relationships to unusual architecture and postcard like messages. The image space is restructured through the capturing, digital composition and multiplexing processes. Space takes on a poetic form, hinged by internal relationships as well as having symmetries to the viewing space. My project based research with design tools, image composition and installation is part of my PhD on holographic image design at the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory, (RMIT University). By analysing my project work, this paper investigates the potentials of holograms to fold and unfold the space of experience.
 Hi. The artwork that I've been working on, the title of this paper is called Folding Space, Unfolding Action. And this work is the core of what I'm writing my PhD on. It's a part of my holographic practice. So in 2006 I was working on a series of holograms. Essentially I was capturing urban landscapes with my digital camera. And what I was interested in was the dynamics of the landscapes, the way the architecture guided the body through landscapes, and the way our mind created images of the urban landscape. So as this series developed, what I realized was really interesting was the way I was moving around these places. And I started to think about these works as postcards, as ways of me experiencing something, compiling it, putting it into a very compressed form of this hologram that could then be displayed somewhere else for someone else to see. This hologram, which is in the art exhibition, so you should go and see it, has a number of lines of movement in it. It's from Hungary. It's from the fisherman's bastion. And what I did was I moved around the architecture. And as you move just backwards and forwards in front of the hologram, what you see is essentially moving forwards, moving around, and these different movements that all compose of the experience of visiting this place. This hologram, I installed, my installations are quite strange, I have to say. This is the smallest gallery I've installed in. It's the width of a doorway. It's got a mezzanine level, so this is someone who's actually quite short in this space. And what I wanted to do with the postcards was put them as if they were an information placard. And then at the same time, I wanted to force people into a quite intimate relationship with the image. These holograms were mirror-backed transmission images, so what happens is the viewer actually sees a reflection of themselves in between, and in between the reflection of themselves is the hologram. And they have to move around the hologram to see the image, and in doing so, they're catching glimpses of themselves. Some people found this uncomfortable and try and get the hologram to sort of sit in between themselves and their reflection, whereas at other times, people sort of looked around the hologram and checked their hair. This is one of the pieces of that show, which was the invitations to this show were hand-drawn maps. So I invited everyone with an individual hand-drawn map to get to the exhibition, and I actually used those hand-drawn maps to make a hologram that showed people that they'd arrived at the exhibition. And this was in Cologne in Germany. So what I started to realize was that in the process of capturing these spaces, it was the experience and the feeling of being in these spaces that I was very interested in. And so I started to seek out spaces that had intense feelings, tight spaces, spaces of movement, multiple levels. This hologram, there's three pictures of the hologram here, is Paternoster. And this was taken in an open-face moving elevator, and I held the camera above my head, and I took photographs of myself as I was sort of moving through these different floors of an office building. I removed the office building because it was really very boring. And instead of the office building, I put infinite spaces, so the sense of that you're moving into these different floors, but each floor opens up into a very large space. This hologram, I wanted to exhibit in a way that also forced people into quite an uncomfortable situation. It was exhibited in New York with a cushion so people could kneel and look up at the hologram. Other people actually sat on the cushion and used their feet to push against the floor and slide backwards into the gallery in order to see the image. The hologram was actually designed for an exhibition in a stairwell. What happens in the stairwell is you have to look up to view the hologram, and you have to negotiate the stairs. This causes quite a discomfort. You want to look where you're going so you don't fall. You also want to catch the animation. The feeling of being in this pattern of style was mimicked by the experience of what it was to actually view this hologram. The second series in this hologram was Slide. I haven't actually installed that with the Slide yet, but the idea of this one is that as I slide down, and this is actually quite a deep space made out of different maps, the viewer will actually also be on a slide looking up, watching me slide as they slide. The top little animation here, this was part of my work with Urban Landscapes. I was capturing myself in those landscapes. There was many things I was looking for. One of them was quite dynamic, quite a femoral architecture, and architecture that was ambiguous as well in a sense of you couldn't quite tell where the ground was. The relationship to the body was the most strong relationship, the relationship to the shadow. The shadow stays fairly consistent while the architecture is really very dynamic. I started to decide that it wasn't enough for just me to experience this and to take these images and install them. What I did was I got all my friends, got them with their digital cameras, and arranged for all of them to come and photograph architecture in different formations. I went back to this same site a year later with 26 people and digital cameras. They photographed essentially a very similar image which I then compiled together, matching the shadows of the people, but to gain quite a large amount of dynamics in the architecture. It was an experience of herding cats. I don't think you should use your friends for your art like this, and getting people to form a circle, getting people to form into lines. Everyone was equipped with diagrams. We used all sorts of different ways of aligning our bodies to the space. It's a very interesting project and a project I want to do again. I've done some leak frog projects which work quite well where you've got a tag team of people with cameras. This was also playing on the ideas of Flickr and these photo pools. Even at this conference, there's hundreds and hundreds of photographs being taken from all these different perspectives. I was trying to do was map these together into something that was quite a combined experience. This was another example where we were all on a street in a figure of eight and we played a game of dominoes. You took a photo and then turned around and took a photo, and the next person took a photo and took a photo and took a photo and took a photo. It's actually causing the action of photography. The holograms that I made from the series are really very dense. They've got so much detail. They've got so many levels in them. The recognition of faces is so important to actually make them into any sort of recognisable form. This is all photos from one of the holograms, figure eight. When I exhibited these holograms, usually my work, I wanted entice movement. With these holograms, because they were so dense, I also had to confine the viewer. I had to get the viewer to stay quite still, to take time with the image, to allow themselves to really see that image, and at the same time encourage them to move because otherwise they wouldn't play the hologram. These holograms were installed in Bus Gallery in Melbourne and I modified office chairs so that the person's actually on a wheelie chair. There was a number of wheelie chairs in the gallery which set up all sorts of different movements and patterns. People rocking unison and slide across the gallery. Perfect. This is one of the holograms. I'm afraid not a very good video, but you've got a sense of how much information is in there. In moving backwards and forwards, in this hologram, you're zooming in and out. I really like that translation of one movement to another. This hologram is also in the art form. With this hologram, there's two directions of parallax. If you go side to side, you move 360 degrees around the exhibition buildings, which the building turns to a lacework. It becomes quite insistential. If you move up and down, you actually follow the photographers. The photographers are squatting and then standing up. Essentially they're able to capture the whole building, which almost disintegrates in its presentation. For this hologram, I needed to install it so people were standing so they could get that up and down movement. It's another image from the gallery. What I found was that this up and down movement was quite different from side to side. The holograms that I made with the up and down movement had a very different proprioceptive experience in the viewer. I started to think about what this movement was. I started thinking about going up and down. At that point, I started thinking about jellyfish. I went to Korea and I made some stereograms of jellyfish. The original files were computer generated. It was quite a simple, organic thing to make in a three-dimensional program. The idea here was all about the installation. The first installation I did in Cologne, I put it in a window of the gallery where the postcards were inside and put a trampoline outside. The viewers were on the trampoline jumping up and down to see the jellyfish in the window. This was a surprise that developed as it got dark, so the trampoline got pulled out. After a few drinks, everyone was encouraged to jump on. Where this exhibition was really intended for was this is my New York home. I've been living on a passenger ferry. I thought that this is a perfect environment to display the jellyfish in because it's about all that lives around us. I set up the holograms around the trampoline. You can get a little bit of a sense of the movement. They really do. You start to notice all the fat in your cheeks and your bum because it really goes with the jellyfish as you go up and it stretches and you go down and you can feel this movement. Then the installation involved various people getting on the trampoline and jumping up and down. While one person was experiencing the holography, this was set up and this was something that was continued throughout the night so that this was something that everyone was watching the participants rather than the holograms. What my work is really looking at is that way that we move. Essentially you could say that the hologram isn't the finished work, it's the person jumping. That I'm essentially making a choreography for movement. Thank you. Are you ready for questions?
 Hi.  The artwork that I've been working on, the title of this paper is called Folding Space,  Unfolding Action.  And this work is the core of what I'm writing my PhD on.  It's a part of my holographic practice.  So in 2006 I was working on a series of holograms.  Essentially I was capturing urban landscapes with my digital camera.  And what I was interested in was the dynamics of the landscapes, the way the architecture  guided the body through landscapes, and the way our mind created images of the urban landscape.  So as this series developed, what I realized was really interesting was the way I was moving  around these places.  And I started to think about these works as postcards, as ways of me experiencing something,  compiling it, putting it into a very compressed form of this hologram that could then be displayed  somewhere else for someone else to see.  This hologram, which is in the art exhibition, so you should go and see it, has a number  of lines of movement in it.  It's from Hungary.  It's from the fisherman's bastion.  And what I did was I moved around the architecture.  And as you move just backwards and forwards in front of the hologram, what you see is  essentially moving forwards, moving around, and these different movements that all compose  of the experience of visiting this place.  This hologram, I installed, my installations are quite strange, I have to say.  This is the smallest gallery I've installed in.  It's the width of a doorway.  It's got a mezzanine level, so this is someone who's actually quite short in this space.  And what I wanted to do with the postcards was put them as if they were an information  placard.  And then at the same time, I wanted to force people into a quite intimate relationship  with the image.  These holograms were mirror-backed transmission images, so what happens is the viewer actually  sees a reflection of themselves in between, and in between the reflection of themselves  is the hologram.  And they have to move around the hologram to see the image, and in doing so, they're  catching glimpses of themselves.  Some people found this uncomfortable and try and get the hologram to sort of sit in between  themselves and their reflection, whereas at other times, people sort of looked around  the hologram and checked their hair.  This is one of the pieces of that show, which was the invitations to this show were hand-drawn  maps.  So I invited everyone with an individual hand-drawn map to get to the exhibition, and I actually  used those hand-drawn maps to make a hologram that showed people that they'd arrived at  the exhibition.  And this was in Cologne in Germany.  So what I started to realize was that in the process of capturing these spaces, it was  the experience and the feeling of being in these spaces that I was very interested in.  And so I started to seek out spaces that had intense feelings, tight spaces, spaces of  movement, multiple levels.  This hologram, there's three pictures of the hologram here, is Paternoster.  And this was taken in an open-face moving elevator, and I held the camera above my head,  and I took photographs of myself as I was sort of moving through these different floors  of an office building.  I removed the office building because it was really very boring.  And instead of the office building, I put infinite spaces, so the sense of that you're  moving into these different floors, but each floor opens up into a very large space.  This hologram, I wanted to exhibit in a way that also forced people into quite an uncomfortable  situation.  It was exhibited in New York with a cushion so people could kneel and look up at the hologram.  Other people actually sat on the cushion and used their feet to push against the floor  and slide backwards into the gallery in order to see the image.  The hologram was actually designed for an exhibition in a stairwell.  What happens in the stairwell is you have to look up to view the hologram, and you have  to negotiate the stairs.  This causes quite a discomfort.  You want to look where you're going so you don't fall.  You also want to catch the animation.  The feeling of being in this pattern of style was mimicked by the experience of what it  was to actually view this hologram.  The second series in this hologram was Slide.  I haven't actually installed that with the Slide yet, but the idea of this one is that  as I slide down, and this is actually quite a deep space made out of different maps, the  viewer will actually also be on a slide looking up, watching me slide as they slide.  The top little animation here, this was part of my work with Urban Landscapes.  I was capturing myself in those landscapes.  There was many things I was looking for.  One of them was quite dynamic, quite a femoral architecture, and architecture that was ambiguous  as well in a sense of you couldn't quite tell where the ground was.  The relationship to the body was the most strong relationship, the relationship to the  shadow.  The shadow stays fairly consistent while the architecture is really very dynamic.  I started to decide that it wasn't enough for just me to experience this and to take  these images and install them.  What I did was I got all my friends, got them with their digital cameras, and arranged for  all of them to come and photograph architecture in different formations.  I went back to this same site a year later with 26 people and digital cameras.  They photographed essentially a very similar image which I then compiled together, matching  the shadows of the people, but to gain quite a large amount of dynamics in the architecture.  It was an experience of herding cats.  I don't think you should use your friends for your art like this, and getting people  to form a circle, getting people to form into lines.  Everyone was equipped with diagrams.  We used all sorts of different ways of aligning our bodies to the space.  It's a very interesting project and a project I want to do again.  I've done some leak frog projects which work quite well where you've got a tag team of  people with cameras.  This was also playing on the ideas of Flickr and these photo pools.  Even at this conference, there's hundreds and hundreds of photographs being taken from  all these different perspectives.  I was trying to do was map these together into something that was quite a combined  experience.  This was another example where we were all on a street in a figure of eight and we played  a game of dominoes.  You took a photo and then turned around and took a photo, and the next person took a photo  and took a photo and took a photo and took a photo.  It's actually causing the action of photography.  The holograms that I made from the series are really very dense.  They've got so much detail.  They've got so many levels in them.  The recognition of faces is so important to actually make them into any sort of recognisable  form.  This is all photos from one of the holograms, figure eight.  When I exhibited these holograms, usually my work, I wanted entice movement.  With these holograms, because they were so dense, I also had to confine the viewer.  I had to get the viewer to stay quite still, to take time with the image, to allow themselves  to really see that image, and at the same time encourage them to move because otherwise  they wouldn't play the hologram.  These holograms were installed in Bus Gallery in Melbourne and I modified office chairs  so that the person's actually on a wheelie chair.  There was a number of wheelie chairs in the gallery which set up all sorts of different  movements and patterns.  People rocking unison and slide across the gallery.  Perfect.  This is one of the holograms.  I'm afraid not a very good video, but you've got a sense of how much information is in  there.  In moving backwards and forwards, in this hologram, you're zooming in and out.  I really like that translation of one movement to another.  This hologram is also in the art form.  With this hologram, there's two directions of parallax.  If you go side to side, you move 360 degrees around the exhibition buildings, which the  building turns to a lacework.  It becomes quite insistential.  If you move up and down, you actually follow the photographers.  The photographers are squatting and then standing up.  Essentially they're able to capture the whole building, which almost disintegrates in its  presentation.  For this hologram, I needed to install it so people were standing so they could get  that up and down movement.  It's another image from the gallery.  What I found was that this up and down movement was quite different from side to side.  The holograms that I made with the up and down movement had a very different proprioceptive  experience in the viewer.  I started to think about what this movement was.  I started thinking about going up and down.  At that point, I started thinking about jellyfish.  I went to Korea and I made some stereograms of jellyfish.  The original files were computer generated.  It was quite a simple, organic thing to make in a three-dimensional program.  The idea here was all about the installation.  The first installation I did in Cologne, I put it in a window of the gallery where the  postcards were inside and put a trampoline outside.  The viewers were on the trampoline jumping up and down to see the jellyfish in the window.  This was a surprise that developed as it got dark, so the trampoline got pulled out.  After a few drinks, everyone was encouraged to jump on.  Where this exhibition was really intended for was this is my New York home.  I've been living on a passenger ferry.  I thought that this is a perfect environment to display the jellyfish in because it's about  all that lives around us.  I set up the holograms around the trampoline.  You can get a little bit of a sense of the movement.  They really do.  You start to notice all the fat in your cheeks and your bum because it really goes with the  jellyfish as you go up and it stretches and you go down and you can feel this movement.  Then the installation involved various people getting on the trampoline and jumping up and  down.  While one person was experiencing the holography, this was set up and this was something that  was continued throughout the night so that this was something that everyone was watching  the participants rather than the holograms.  What my work is really looking at is that way that we move.  Essentially you could say that the hologram isn't the finished work, it's the person  jumping.  That I'm essentially making a choreography for movement.  Thank you.  Are you ready for questions?
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