(Remix) True Holograms: A Different Kind of Screen; A Different Kind of Ghost

Abstract

This chapter discusses true holograms as a “remix” discussion from Chapter 4 of ghosts out of the post-screen. Commonly confused with holographic projections, true holograms are two-dimensional images naturally viewed (i.e. without optical aids) as 3-dimensional objects. Leveraging theoretical sources such as Deleuze’s notion of “the brain is the screen” and Vilém Flusser’s ideas of point culture and linearity, the chapter argues for the post-screen through the true hologram whose ghosts are not of the spectral return of the dead, but digital apparitions via which the human mind ideates and projects realities. These digital ghosts thus return with a necromancy of their own on the terms of zerodimensionality and post-rationality, confronting us with new problems of reality and questions about ourselves.