**1. Introduction**

Artists began working with holography as soon as the new medium became available in the late 1960s, attracted by its unique spatial and temporal characteristics (Benyon 1969; Nauman 1968). Holographic space was defined graphically by Pepper (1989, p. 298) depicting the spaces in which a holographic image can appear: behind the holographic plate; floating in front of the plate; or crossing the image plane. Holography can not only enable the artist to choose where to place an object in space, but it can appear to freeze or capture time and show di fferent moments in time situated in the same space (Dawson 1999). These di fferent spatial and temporal characteristics, along with the verisimilitude of the subject matter depicted, have resulted in emotional responses from audiences, particularly those encountering the medium for the first time, who express amazement and disbelief at what they are seeing (Benyon 1980).

This paper describes a practice-based Ph.D. study by the author which produced a body of holographic art work using holographic space in a new way to represent a virtual time-line. Practice-based research within academia relies on the production of a new artefact, or artefacts, and is accompanied by a written argumen<sup>t</sup> proving that the work provides a contribution to knowledge (Candy 2006). As is typical of a practice-based research methodology, the author took on many roles during the research process. Gray and Malins have described the role of the researcher in this methodological approach as being three-fold:

• a generator of the research material-art/design works, and participant in the creative process


The author's research questions asked: could interactive artworks be created to depict a chronological time-line in space, with images farther back in the hologram representing a period further back in time? Could this new use of holographic space be perceived by an audience, and could the artwork move an audience emotionally, beyond a sense of amazement and disbelief and toward a sense of connection with the work. The artwork produced was interactive, relying on the movement of the viewer to create the four-dimensional image as a result of their interaction. As the viewer was part of the artwork, and the audience's perception of the work was required to answer the research questions and it became necessary to obtain feedback from the viewers themselves. A critique group consisting of the author's peers was used to gain feedback of the artwork produced in the study. The critique was novel in that the author was asked questions about the artwork by the group, but remained silent in response. The process and rationale for the approach is described further in Section 3.

A description of holographic space and time is outlined below and followed by an account of the research methods used in the study. These methods include both the production of new artworks and a critical evaluation of their impact on audiences. This article also includes the results of the study in the form of a description of the holographic artworks produced and an analysis of the artwork by a critique group.

#### **2. Holographic Space and Time**

While Pepper defined holographic space to include both the area behind the plate and the area between the surface of the hologram and the viewer (Pepper 1989), it has since been argued that holographic artwork can include other spaces. In this journal, Jacques Desbien describes the 'dispositif' of holography to involve:

... the wall, room, ambient light, the specific optical characteristics and also the viewer. (Desbien 2018)

Other spaces which can be included in the artwork are psychological and conceptual spaces: Richardson (1992) noted that holographic portraits can push or break the proceoceptive boundary of the viewer, entering their personal space when the holographic image escapes the frame of the hologram. In her Ph.D. thesis, Mrongovius (2011) describes the a ffective impact holograms can have causing physical responses in the viewer who is compelled to move to animate the holograms. Artist and holographer Isabel Azevedo has included time, as well as space, within her description of her animated digital holographic artworks (Azevedo et al. 2014). There is a performative element in Azevedo's artwork which includes not only the time taken to view the hologram, but also the time taken for preparation of the artwork, the performance captured in her hologram and the printing of the hologram.

The author's own artwork aimed to build further upon the psychological and conceptual spaces described above to depict a chronological narrative within the *Z*-axis of holographic space and include the viewer.

## **3. Research Methods**

The author used a variety of di fferent methods to create artworks and to evaluate them. Lenticular images, analogue shadowgrams and a digital animated hologram were produced as part of the study and exhibited to audiences. The analogue holograms were produced with a Helium Neon laser and split beam one step reflection holography process in which light passes through a transparency mounted on a ground glass screen and is recorded on holographic film. The digital image was produced from scanned photographs and a digitized edited video used as textures on plane objects in a

Cinema4D software programme. The animation was output to 2000 jpeg images and printed by Geola, a holographic digital printing manufacturer. The manufacture process which created these works is beyond the scope of this article but is covered at length in the author's Ph.D. dissertation (John 2018).

## *Evaluating Audience Experience*

It is impossible to directly observe the inner feelings of the audience ... being able to explore the "interaction space" involves some form of evaluation with audience cooperation. (Edmonds 2010, p. 2)

The author considered the use of typical methods used to evaluate interactive art: log-data, video footages, interviews, and questionnaires (Morreale and De Angeli 2015; Morrison et al. 2007), audience observation (Bech 2014) and self-evaluation (Mrongovius 2011). The author chose the following methods as the most appropriate for the type and number of viewers surveyed: paper-based questionnaires and on-line surveys; observations of the audience interacting with the artwork, self-evaluation of interaction with the artwork and lastly a silent critique group in lieu of interviews. The silent critique method was introduced to the author in 2014 by the facilitator of an informal contemporary artists networking group called 'Questions'. The Hampshire-based group met monthly to critique each other's work, helping to develop each other's professional practice. While the 'silent student critique' is common in Higher Education (Elkins 2014), the silent critique method had not previously been used in art holography research to obtain feedback on interactive artworks.

A small group of three artists working in film and mixed media analysed and evaluated the author's artwork (including the works shown in Figure 1a,b below) during a critique session held on 13 October 2014. While this appears to be a very small sample size, the Social Scientist Anthony Onwuegbuzie describes this limited number of participants as an acceptable number for a mini-focus group if participants have specialist knowledge (Onwuegbuzie et al. 2009). The group met and responded to the artwork for one-and-a-quarter hours. An audio recording was made of the session by the organiser and the discussion transcribed verbatim by the author as recommended by Elkins (2014). The second critique group was composed of a di fferent audience; nine experts in art and holography. The criteria for the selection of the experts in art and holography included those with doctorates; doctoral candidates; long-standing or award-winning artists working with holography; and university or college teachers working in art and holography. Volunteers were sought during the International Symposium on Display Holography in Aveiro, Portugal (ISDH2018) and three men and six women agreed to help. Two of the nine members of the group had English as a second language.

The critique group met with the author at the Aveiro City Museum where one of the author's artworks was on display as part of the *Art in Holography: Light, Space & Time* exhibition. The author provided transport to and from the symposium to the museum and provided refreshments after the critique session.

The author introduced the group to the silent researcher questioning process. She requested that participants ask her questions about the artwork presented and explaining that she would consider the group's questions very carefully, but not answer them during the session. The structure of the silent critique session was largely unfamiliar to the participants, and at times they found it di fficult to phrase their comments as a question. It proved almost impossible for one researcher who did not speak English as a first language; however, it was unclear whether it was a language barrier that prevented the person from doing what had been asked of them. Despite being asked to address questions to the researcher only, the group did discuss the work with one another on occasion. The silent critique group di ffered from a focus group in two ways: firstly, the researcher was silent during the session and was therefore unable to guide participants to answer research questions which would have been more typical in a focus group. Secondly, in a focus group, discussion between group participants would have been encouraged, however in the silent researcher critique participants were encouraged to address the researcher only not each other (however, in practice this was not always the case).

The session was filmed and audio-taped. The filming enabled a better understanding of artists' views through observation of their body language and gestures, which became an important part of one participant's method of communication as English was not their first language. Filming and recording were done by the author's fellow researcher Tove Dalenius.

As the study included participants, it required and obtained ethical approval from the Art, Design and Humanities Faculty Ethics committee of De Montfort University. The author used archival images from her own family in which individuals are identifiable. Permission was obtained from family members to use their photographs, film footage and precious objects in the artwork and to retain the photographs indefinitely. Other areas of concern regarding the ethics of the study included: the gathering of information from or/and about human beings through on-line questionnaires; observation of human behavior, and the recording of focus group (critique) sessions. The critique session participants were notified of the following in an introduction:


Participants signed forms to agree to take part in the research process. All the participants were given the author's contact details and were made aware of how to see the results of the research process. The comments of the participants were anonymised and each contributor was assigned a letter of the alphabet to distinguish their remarks from one another.

The process of evaluation using the silent researcher critique method resulted in a wealth of qualitative data, which was coded, and themes generated and analyzed using a simple general inductive approach. The purpose of the inductive approach was "to allow research findings to emerge from the frequent, dominant, or significant themes inherent in raw data" (Thomas 2006). The transcribed text was read carefully a couple of times to identify themes and categories and this enabled the author to make links between the evaluation aims and the results from the raw data. NVivo Qualitative data analysis software was used to speed up the coding process with evaluation objectives providing a focus for the analysis. To help with creating codes and themes Dalenius, was trained in rudimentary social science methods and assisted with the holography critique.
