Venue: Exploratorium.
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA.
Date: May 21 - June 17, 1987.
Catalogue: No.
Type: All Holography
“EquusUnderwater” was composed of 30 large format transmission and reflection holograms and ten smaller holograms, arranged together to form the overall stage set scenes, encompassing an area 16 ft. wide by 20 ft. deep and 12 ft. high. (Exploratorium).
The stage front view, by Gorglione, was a projecting horse galloping by the side of a moving holographic river, in 8 panels of 22 in. by 30 in. transmission holograms. Three panels of four 22 in. by 30 in. multi-exposure rainbow “Clouds” hung above the galloping horse.
The whole was suspended from steel poles and smaller custom steel and aluminum frames made by Greg Cherry. Each transmission hologram panel had two or three lights in a vertical row with variable timed lighting, so that rainbow color shifts and changing imagery were part of the show.
Greg Cherry shot large format reflection holograms of the “Guardians” and other images of the new, at the time, green sensitive Illford plates. Laser Affiliates, with Gorglione, Cherry and Steve Anderson, installed an argon laser with UV optics. This allowed the scanning laser beam to fluoresce custom rear projection screens, silkscreened by Jos Sances from images provided by Gorglione. Laser scanning of images such as a galloping horse and schools of fish were visible through the transparent front holograms, and through transparent layered screens at the stop of the stage set.
Exploratorium viewers walked through the stage set installation. To the right was another section of eight large format transmission diffraction gratings, the “Astral Gates” by Gorglione. Cherry made other large format gratings with figurative diffraction effects complementary to the laser scanning.
In fashion becoming typical of Cherry Optical work, the artists remastered some of the images, and recopied all of them, using new geometry for “EquusUnderwater” at the Chicago Museum of Holography. This staging filled the Chicago MOH, with a wall of laser-illuminated diffraction gratings replacing the laser light imagery.
“Sculpture Magazine,” “Chicago Tribune Daily” and their “Sunday Magazine,”“Holosphere,” “Holographics International,” and other publications wrote about “EquusUnderwater.”
“EquusUnderwater: A Holographic StageSet” was influential within the holographic art community, at the best inspiring other installations of holography, and at the worst, evoking bald copies of parts of the Stage Set.
[Gorglione]
