Silver halide Denisyuk hologram
School of Creative Industries and Culture (CIC)
Creative Practice Biennial 10 July – 22 August 2026
Leicester Gallery, De Montfort University
Background
As an artist and technologists working in a university setting I wanted to try to see if consumer AI could support me with 3D modelling. I wanted to build my own skills and understanding, in a playful and open manner. Serendipitously Katharine Short from the DMU Special Collections did a presentation where I first came across the below 1958-9 prospectus cover. I thought that it would be interesting to reflect the historical and current intersection of Art and Technology through experimenting with the design in 3D.
Leicester School of Art was founded in 1870 and underwent several name changes over the next 122 years before it became De Montfort University in 1992. One of these was in 1929, when it became the Leicester College of Arts and Crafts and the Leicester College of Technology. The Arts College taught architecture, building crafts, furniture making, printing, book production, metalworking, dress design, weaving, drawing and painting. Meanwhile, the College of Technology offered education in boot and shoe manufacture, hosiery and textiles, chemistry, dyeing, pharmacy, physics, mathematics, engineering, office management, and scientific information for trades such as grocery, butchery, bakery and confectionery.
Known locally as the ‘Art and Tech’, the Colleges provided vital vocational and practical education to the people of Leicester until 1969, when they became Leicester Polytechnic. Their organisational structure featured a separate headmaster for each College but shared facilities, resources and administration. Students were encouraged to take relevant courses from the other College; for example, a footwear design student at the Art College might take a module on shoe construction at the Technology College. Marketing materials from the Art and Tech era play on the dual nature of the Colleges, with student magazine names like Duo and Gemini, and matching prospectus designs. The 1958-59 prospectus is the most striking of these: the complementary figures of art and science are shown in mirrored poses, Art holding a palette and brushes, Technology holding a mechanical gear. Unfortunately the names of the artist and/or graphic designer are not recorded, but they were likely to have been staff of the College which had a School of Printing and Graphic Design.
The original prospectus can be viewed at DMU Special Collections which holds the institutional archive (reference DM/A/076). See https://library.dmu.ac.uk/specialcollections for more information.
KathArine SHORT – DMU Special Collections (2026)
My text is written in first person avoiding academic jargon, as I want to invite you, and all potential readers into the journey of discovery.
AI reflection
During the whole process I felt quite conflicted about my use of AI. I am naturally curios and enjoying encountering new technologies. However I am also aware that using AI has a significant impact on the use of global resources. I found myself wishing that I had a little meter showing how much energy and water my process demanded each day. I simply don’t know. I do not know if it justifiable or ethical. We need to find out together.
In my post as a senior lecturer at a UK university I have to build a practical understanding of AI so that I can guide my students to my best ability. The students also teach me a lot, some use AI, and some disapprove of using it.
There are also current debates about creative authorship and AI. The Special Collections and Katharine Short had not been able to identify who designed this 1958 cover, despite geniune efforts to do so. I would of course have cited the artist is possible. We decided that for the purpose of this small project it was ethically acceptable to train the AI on the Prospectus cover image.
Workflow
It turned out that is was not so easy to create a 3D-printable .stl model using the available online automated tools.
Below are some screengrabs of various attempts:
Whilst ChatGPT struggled with making printable 3D .stl models, it made interesting mockups of 3D sculptures as 2D images.
ChatGPT confidently claimed that it create an .stl model for 3D printing, however when opening the code in the 3D modelling program Blender the results were not convincing.
ChatGPT then suggested that I should contact a human 3D freelance artist.
I ordered a 3D .stl model from Rauf Valiyev at Fiverr. Rauf agreed to me citing his work.
The DMU technical instructor Ray Yau supported the 3D printing.
The initial version was too small and the prints failed. Some of my colleagues in Fine Art suggested that the failed prints were more interesting than the successful ones.
This may be a departure point for future exploration.
Silver halide Denisyuk holography
My silver halide holographic process includes:
Cutting glass plates, in very low light.
Dipping plates in TEA (triethanolamine) to activate substrate, in very low light.
Warming up lasers.
Setting up model so that it does not move even a micron during exposure.
Letting model settle.
Exposure in silence without any motion, in darkness.
(20–30 second exposure time).
Mixing development and bleaching chemicals.Developing and bleaching hologram, in very low light.
TOVE (2026)
Carefully using a squeegee to remove any residue. Dry hologram.
Below you can see a diagram of the Denisyuk white light reflection holographic recording design.
DMU Holography PhD researcher Oliver Peacock has been an active member of the team which develops and improves the optical set-ups required for Denisyuk holography.
In 1999 Professor Yuri Denisyuk received an honorary doctorate of Science at De Montfort University.
This Leicester Mercury article gets the details slight wrong. Holography was invented by Dennis Gabor who received the Nobel Peace price in 1971 for “his invention and development of the holographic method”.
However Denisyuk developed a specific type of hologram which can be viewed with for example a white spotlight in a gallery, rather than requiring a laser set-up to view the hologram as well as to record it.
Holography
For a fundamental description of how holography works I recommend Grant Sanderson’s How are holograms possible?
https://www.3blue1brown.com/lessons/holograms/
Holography is also featured in the 2026 Stories segment of the Nobel Prize website. Here my PhD first supervisor and DMU Professor emeritus Dr Martin Richardson is mentioned:
Holograms: The most perfect imaging medium ever made?
AI reflection
On the 6th June 2026 Anthropic, who created the LLM Claude called for a global pause in AI development.
Clark and Favaro (2026)
“We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology.”
Pedagogies of Reflexivity
• Foster self-awareness, critical thinking, and understanding of power
• Encourage challenging assumptions, leading to personal and intellectual growth
• Deepen engagement and social responsibility in the arts
• Require vulnerability from educators, including uncertainty, empathy, and honesty
• Highlight that teaching and research shape and are shaped by institutional contexts
(Kan & Khoo, 2025; Hoveid & Hoveid, 2019)
Kan and Khoo (2025) argue that: Pedagogies of reflexivity offer a transformative approach to teaching and learning, inducing introspection and self-awareness, promoting critical thinking, and an understanding of power dynamics (McDowall, 2020).
By encouraging students [and ourselves] to reflect on their own perspectives, challenge assumptions, make important intellectual and personally transformative moves (Benmayor, 2008), these pedagogies foster a deeper engagement with the arts and heightens a sense of social responsibility.
As the reflexive process requires courage, humility, adaptability, empathy, thoughtfulness, honesty, it will be important to further explore the ‘vulnerability’ that educators experience when they “switch from rational dialogue to the tensions associated with … a pedagogy of the unknowable” (Hibbert & Cunliffe, 2015).
Practice of reflexivity
Tove (2026)
What is the state of Research, De Montfort University, AI, the world, Europe, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland , England, Leicester, myself, us …
… within the university where I work: the School of Creative Industries and Culture, the Arts, Design and Performance Innovation Institute, the Practice Research Forum. Colleagues and students?
How do we use AI ethically?
Are we inadvertently contributing to the development of for example Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, through using and training the AI?
Can we for be a sustainable university, building a circular economy, whilst fully implementing the use of AI.
How is this very current situation reflected in the creative work, so far…
…
I feel like I am always rushing. I feel like I barely scratch the surface of how to handle…
But in the holography lab I have to be calm and methodological. It invites to a kind of mindfulness and meditation.
Exhibition
It is notoriously difficult to photograph holograms, they demand the audience attention in person. A two-dimensional medium like photography can not capture the three-dimensional experience of the hologram. It is often even more difficult to photograph holograms in exhibition spaces where reflections, which do not bother the human perception in person, disturbs the documentation. I have included a small image here as a place holder, but I recommend visiting the exhibition in person.
They day of the opening of the exhibition was unusually hot, making the possible changes to come due to global warming seem palpable.
Reflexive Figures (2026) at the School of Creative Industries and Culture (CIC) Creative Practice Biennial, Leicester Gallery.
References:
Baraniuk, C. (2026) Holograms: The most perfect imaging medium ever made?, NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach. Available at: https://www.nobelprize.org/stories/holograms/ (Accessed: July 12, 2026).
Bjelkhagen, H. (2009) “Denisyuk color holography for Display, Documentation and Measurement,” Journal of Holography and Speckle, 5(1), pp. 33–41. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1166/jhs.2009.006.
Calle , C. (2021) Superstrings and other things: A guide to physics. Taylor & Francis.
Dalenius, T.N. (2023) ‘Full-parallax digital holography, anatomy, and art’, Proc. SPIE 12445, Practical Holography XXXVII: Displays, Materials, and Applications, pp. 1–11. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2650105.
Dalenius, T.N. (2024) ‘Revealing Emergence’, Scene, 12(1), pp. 43–63. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1386/scene_00070_1.
De Montfort University (2025) LibGuides: Using Generative Artificial Intelligence: What is generative AI?, Dmu.ac.uk. Available at: https://library.dmu.ac.uk/genai/what (Accessed: 7 June 2026).
Hoveid, H. and Hoveid, M.H. (2019) ‘Teaching – A Reflexive Approach’, Contemporary philosophies and theories in education, pp. 47–78. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27076-6_3.
Kan, R.Y.P. and Khoo, C.S.G. (2025) ‘Codetta: Pedagogies of Reflexivity’, in Signature Pedagogies for Professions in Arts and Design. Springer , pp. 75–80.
Sanderson, G. (2024) 3Blue1Brown – How are holograms possible? | Optics puzzles 5, 3blue1brown.com. Available at: https://www.3blue1brown.com/lessons/holograms (Accessed: 24 April 2025).
Smith, S. (2022) ‘A play space for Practice-Based Phd Research’, in Routledge International Handbook of Practice-Based Research. Milton: Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 475–490.
United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe (2025) UN addresses AI and the Dangers of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems. United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe. Available at: https://unric.org/en/un-addresses-ai-and-the-dangers-of-lethal-autonomous-weapons-systems/ (Accessed: 25 June 2026)