MJ’s Resurrection and The Future of Holography
Love him, hate him, but you can’t ignore the grooves of the King of Pop. Michael Jackson continues to get our foot tapping from the other side of the consciousness wall. His latest posthumous album, Xscape, brings back the the classic MJ, the one we 90’s kids were in love with while growing up. It took half a years worth of effort but we saw MJ’s resurrection at this year’s Billboard Music Awards, showing off his signature moves and making us all slaves to his Rhythm.
His latest feat at billboard awards was made possible due to the awesome powers of Holography. No, holography is not limited to the “Holodeck” on Star Trek alone. It’s here, it’s real and it’s getting us a lot more nostalgic. This incredible technology helped us witness the man with the golden feet after almost a decade. The experience was nothing short of breathtaking.
In 2012, Tupac was resurrected at Coachella and recently Indian Prime Minister elect Narendra Modi used the technology to address multiple rallies at the same time. Celine Dion also performed with a 1968 version of Elvis at the American Idol. All these were made possible through the technique called Pepper’s Ghost.
Holography is a technique which enables three-dimensional images (holograms) to be made. It involves the use of a laser and light measurement for recording visual data. The image changes as the position and orientation of the viewing system changes in exactly the same way as if the object were still present, thus making the image appear three-dimensional. The Holographic principles also states that our own lives must be just projections at a grand scale.
The technology though is not just restricted to these performances. We can pretty soon have holographic communication capabilities. The research is in progress to allow you and your friends to have a conversations in simulated environments. It will be like video conferencing but you don’t have the distraction of a screen. This is the closest we can come to real life interactions with people thousands of miles away.
A Teliris telepresence videoconferencing system in 2007.
Tele-Immersion seem to be the future of communication. It gives you a fully simulated environment where you can have complete immersive interactions. The users will feel as if they are looking, talking, and meeting with each other face-to-face in the same room.
To achieve this, the computers recognize the presence and movements of individuals and objects. Two or more cameras are used to capture the objects or people. They track those individuals and images and reconstruct them onto one stereo-immersive surface.
Two or more cameras take rapid sequential shots of the same object, continuously performing distance calculations, and projecting them into the computer-simulated environment, as to replicate real-time movement. Tele-immersion presents the greatest technological challenge for Internet2 (The Research Network).
We are still far away from projections like the one that got Leia’s message to Luke and Obi wan through R2D2. There is though an option for fog projection, in which the fog will act as a three dimensional screen where images can be projected. But that would not be immersive enough for true 3D involvement.
Holographic Slideshows are so much cooler than present day projectors
Holographic technology will also help in 3D slide shows. It will be the end of staring at the boring 2D projections on a wall. Imagine interacting with the virtual world with your fingers while presenting a slide show; surely the best way to engage a bored audience. It will be reminiscent of the slide show at rebel ships where they studied the plans of the Death Star. It can also be seen in Big Bang Theory’s episode “The Holographic Excitation”.
Holographic Theory is a great area of study and we should all be taking interest in its evolution. Maybe if we have more innovative brains working on it, we’ll be closer to a Star War style communication apparatus.
