Hologram of Degas sculpture goes on tour
Approach may become ‘a common tool’
Artworks that are too fragile or cumbersome to move around the world could be displayed as holograms after a successful trial.
If visitors to a recent exhibition at Christie’s in London had reached out to lay a hand on Edgar Degas’s Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans their fingers would have passed straight through it.
What was on display was not the original sculpture, valued at more than $32 million, but rather an intensely lifelike hologram.
Devang Thakkar, a senior adviser for digital and technology at Christie’s told The Daily Telegraph that hologram boxes were likely to become “a common tool in our arsenal” because limited resources, time and space make touring delicate and large items difficult.
Degas’s sculpture, which dates to the 1880s, is far too fragile to go on a tour of the
THAT’S THE HOLY GRAIL THAT WE ALL WANT, IN THE LONG RUN, PEOPLE BEING BEAMED INTO IT.
world. At 39 inches tall, it’s also no mean feat to ship it from continent to continent.
But now the single, high-fidelity scan of the statue means that it can be reproduced in holographic form, anywhere, on-demand.
Last week, the hologram of Petite Danseuse was in San Francisco and soon it will emerge in Hong Kong. The hologram, developed by American company Proto, appears inside a large metallic box open to viewers on one side in which the Degas sculpture slowly rotates.
Other uses for the holograms include displaying two-dimensional artwork, such as paintings, and rendering digital art physical.
Christie’s has already used the technology to display non-fungible tokens (NFTS), which are certificates of ownership for digital artwork, outside of a computer screen.
“That resonated because NFTS are made natively digital, we’re not creating a rendering of it in the case like the Degas,” said Thakkar.
In future, holograms might allow auctioneers to conduct simultaneous sales around the globe.
“That’s the holy grail that we all want, in the long run, people being beamed into it,” he said.
At the moment, the high data rates needed to transmit a live hologram are prohibitive