Holograms and their Promises – A Pragmatic Approach in the Contexts of Platforms and Popular Culture
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Philipps-Universität Marburg
Abstract
When the hologram appears it is never trivial. In its various manifestations, the hologram emerges as an immaterial, seamlessly integrated, and utopian image of the future. Associated with three-dimensionality, luminosity, transparency, and interactivity, the hologram’s cultural allure lies not only in science-fiction but also, as this thesis argues, in its ability to transcend rigid technical and scientific categories, revealing how technology is socio-culturally constructed and ideologically infused.
This dissertation examines how the hologram has been reconfigured over the past two decades within the contexts of compact media formats and popular culture. The hologram is therefore considered as a media object, an experience, and a practice. Grounded in film and media studies, the dissertation extends existing perspectives by incorporating approaches from feminist science and technology studies (STS) and contemporary aesthetic theory. Rather than exploring the technical aspects of holography, it addresses the omnipresence of the hologram as an enduring cultural concept. A media-pragmatic approach to platform economies and creator cultures provides a detailed view of holograms in contexts such as advertising and popular culture. The study specifically contributes to understanding how the dynamic interplay between scientific knowledge and the art of illusion manifests in compact moving-image content, particularly on online platforms.
Through a structure of consecutively discussed case studies, the dissertation highlights the heterogeneity of contexts in which holograms are encountered today. These case studies challenge established dichotomies in film and media studies, such as old/new, real/fake, and alive/dead. They demonstrate how holograms provoke moments of failure – be it technological, financial, or ethical – while exploring how different histories of the hologram connect to persistent promises of the future. The term “hologram” encompasses a multitude of cultural experiences and images that embody an age-old promise of 3D’s triumph over 2D representation. Competitive categorizations into “real” and “fake” holograms fail to hold under close scrutiny. A media-pragmatic approach reveals that notions of falseness and fakery are always context-dependent. While the cultural adaptability of the hologram across various contexts is affirmed, the staging of future promises appears differently structured in each case. Feminist perspectives further reveal how holograms in advertising and popular culture often rely on binary as well as stereotypical gender representations.
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This item has been published with the following license: In Copyright