Well hello, I'm here with Mark Diamond.
My mind is blown, so I'm gonna try to act normal
and talk to you, but I really want to get into this art
that you have goin' on here.
So, how long you been doin' this?
Three-dimensional work, I've been doing over 40 years.
40 years.
Laser holography and three-dimensional photography.
I was already making photographs when I saw
my first hologram, but I didn't know how it worked.
I told my parents, I need a laser, convinced 'em
I wasn't gonna burn a hole through the house
or kill anybody, that was 1975.
Wow, so the whole point is to really take the 2-D
and to turn it to 3-D?
[Mark] As long as life is multi-dimensional,
why not capture it that way?
[Jumaane] It gives you a different kind of relationship
with the piece.
[Mark] Oh my god, yeah, it's somewhere between
sculpture and photography.
[Jumaane] So, you're an artist,
however, you are deep into technology.
[Mark] Very much so.
So what's that bridge, how do you connect those worlds?
Well, this has been an effort, and part of my practice,
for over 40 years.
When I first went to study holography, it became obvious
that it was something highly technical.
I'm basically a scientist and an artist,
and it was important to master the technical aspects
of the medium before I could actually apply
an aesthetic sensibility.
As new technologies emerge, it expands the palette
for potential aesthetic expression and
artistic expression, and I'm very, very
interested in that.
I track at least a dozen technologies,
weekly, for decades,
and things are changing really, really fast
in a really cool way.
So, technologies are changing.
What are some of the interesting ways that you've seen?
[Mark] As of three months ago, I now accept any
two-dimensional image, and I can three-dimensionalize.
I can turn them into 3-D, even though nobody
captured them in 3-D in the first place.
Wow.
It's a biggie.
Up until recently, we haven't been able to
work with two-dimensional photographs,
because there wasn't enough information.
But there's some very robust and intuitive
computer programs now, algorithms that allow us
to produce a depth map from a two-dimensional image,
and then render a three-dimensional image
from the original two-dimensional image.
Well, let's check out some stuff, now.
Okay.
[Jumaane] This one here, this one piece
we were talkin' about here, Dizzy Gillespie.
That is 90 images from left to right.
90 images.
So, as you move, you're actually animating it,
so it's like a motion picture where you're the moving part.
[Jumaane] That's really cool.
So, originally it was filmed with motion picture film,
and then we take the movie film and laser that,
and make a hologram of each movie frame.
So, there are holograms representing movie frames
from left to right.
This is two drawings, here?
72 images in there.
Wow.
36 of one drawing, and 36 of the other drawing.
I'm tryin' to figure out how to get in there.
And look.
I wanna get behind that box.
I get it.
Let me see if-- I totally get it,
I totally get it.
I think I almost did.
Yeah, this is the most common reaction.
People can tell it's 3-D, but once your hand is in the
space, your brain kicks forward with a greater realization
of just how 3-D it is.
Yes, I literally floated.
Now, in the case of these kinetic caricatures,
I make six drawings and I combine them all together.
So, I know you shoot a lot of portraits,
and know my co-host, Lolo, had a opportunity
to sit down with you and get captured.
First, show me, what cameras do you usually use
to do this whole 3-D process?
Okay, I capture two main ways.
One way is, I utilize a system that integrates 24 images
that are captured in a second and a half, using six cameras.
The entire thing moves from left to right, and it's going
click, click, click, click, click, click, click, like that,
so I get 24 pictures in about a second and a half.
[Jumaane] With Lolo, did you do it that way, too?
For that process, and I'll show you right now,
I learned how to do it by hand.
I'll sit right here, does this work?
Okay, great, great.
Okay.
This would be one way of capturing, where I say,
okay, you ready, and-- Do I move?
No, don't move.
Okay, and.
(camera clicking)
And I have enough images there to produce
a beautiful portrait.
Right there?
Yeah.
I captured you from 18 different perspectives,
and I combined them all into one.
And that's what you end up seeing
when it's framed on the wall.
All right, well, I know you're workin' on Lolo's,
I'll give you a minute, she'll be here soon.
Here's the original base that I captured when she came.
As you can see, the images are moving from left to right
and they're slightly different perspectives.
When I combine them all and align them all,
they look like this.
When I'm done, I produce an interlaced file
that looks like this.
And this is the thing that I print,
and when you zoom in to it, you'll see
it's made up of tens of thousands of pieces.
I thought you might wanna see that day you stopped in
when you were doing the radio show,
and your hair was glowing in the sun
and I took those pictures.
So let's take a look, there you are.
The interlaced print, I'm going to go ahead and align this,
it should start looking kinda 3-D,
and I'll show you how that works.
I'm gonna peel this back, and a little pressure.
Fine, now let's go over to the laminator.
Here we go, so, once that's done, you're in.
Whoa, it's amazing.
Is that considered a lenticular?
Yes.
So it's 18 pictures, sort of-- All combined.
Thank you for posing.
(laughs) One of the main fun features
of getting to do what I do is to see people's reactions.
I've seen others looking at the work, and then going out
in the world and seeing things more three dimensionally.
I know that sounds like a fantastic claim,
but if I hadn't seen it so darn many times,
I wouldn't say it.
That was great, right?
You can learn more about fine art holograms
and the artist at diamondimages3d.com.