Hologram

Definition

The hologram, for Baudrillard (Simulacra and Simulation, 1981/1994, "Holograms"), is the technical realization of the dream of the double — and therefore the end of the imaginary. It continues the fantasy "of seizing reality live… ever since Narcissus bent over his spring": "the day when your holographic double will be there in space, eventually moving and talking, you will have realized this miracle. Of course, it will no longer be a dream, so its charm will be lost." "In the hologram, it is the imaginary aura of the double that is mercilessly tracked, just as it is in the history of clones." The hologram's medium is not visible or reflective light but "the laser, concentrated light, quintessentialized… an abstract light of simulation" — "the perfect image and end of the imaginary." Baudrillard contrasts it with trompe-l'oeil: the trompe-l'oeil works "through allusion to and ellipsis of presence," while the hologram "veers… into fascination, which is that of passing to the side of the double." Its hyperreality is self-defeating: "with the hologram we are already virtually in another universe: which is nothing but the mirrored equivalent of this one. But which universe is this one?" And it breaks the logic of the original: "each fragment of a hologram can again become the matrix of the complete hologram: the information remains whole… in each of the dispersed fragments." 3-Dimensionality does not bring the simulacrum closer to the real: "the third dimension is only the imaginary of a two-dimensional world, the fourth that of a three-dimensional universe." The concept is the optical twin of cloning-and-the-genetic-code and the technological terminus of the wiki's double and mirror material. See the-double, simulation-hyperreality.

Key Thinkers

• Jean Baudrillard — the concept's author: the hologram as materialized double, the laser as "abstract light of simulation" (1981/1994).
• Mark Goulthorpe / Winka Dubbeldam — the adjacent architectural interest in responsive, luminous, and virtual surfaces (see thing-shapes, interactive-architecture).

Related Concepts

• The Double — the figure the hologram technicalizes: "the imaginary aura of the double… mercilessly tracked."
• Cloning and the Genetic Code — the biological twin: "just as it is in the history of clones."
• Simulation / Hyperreality — the condition the hologram exemplifies.
• Mirror — the prior apparatus of the double, whose imaginary the hologram abolishes.
• Dematerialization — the hologram as the image detached from any material support.
• Augmented Reality / Interactive Architecture — the contemporary descendants.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Simulacra and Simulation (Baudrillard 1981/1994) — the defining source ("Holograms"): "it is the imaginary aura of the double that is mercilessly tracked"; "the hologram, perfect image and end of the imaginary"; the laser as abstract light; the fragmented hologram; "there is no real: the third dimension is only the imaginary of a two-dimensional world."
• Jean Baudrillard: The Defence of the Real (Butler 1999) — the book-length secondary study that reads Baudrillard "in his own terms": the paradox of the sign (paradox-of-the-sign), simulation as the realization rather than the loss of the real (simulation-hyperreality), seduction as the limit to simulation, and the doubling power of theory (doubling, the-real, double-strategy).

Open Questions

• The hologram essay anticipates augmented and virtual reality; is AR/VR the fulfillment, the betrayal, or an entirely different apparatus from Baudrillard's "materialized double"?
• If "there is no real" — only successive dimensions manufactured as the "imaginary" of the previous ones — is the concept a metaphysics of dimensionality rather than a media theory?
• Does the wiki have an architectural hologram case (a projection, a light installation, a media facade) that tests the concept? (See interactive-architecture, sentient-spaces.)