Hologram Room

To Absent Friends by Paula Dawson

The largest hologram on an international scale, showing the greatest depth of field.

To Absent Friends is a holographic artwork created by Paula Dawson. It was the largest holographic commission undertaken in the world at the time, and remains the largest hologram on an international scale, showing the greatest depth of field. To Absent Friends was awarded the Grand Prix of the First ARTEC Biennale in Nagoya, Japan in 1989.

To Absent Friends explores the concept of using contemporary domestic architecture as a memory repository not for factual information but for emotional states.

Dawson’s process began with re-creating a traditional Australian pub within the National Acoustics Laboratory in Sydney, also a functioning holography lab. She staged a New Year’s party, and at strategic moments the guests were asked to vacate the ‘bar-room’ so that Fiona Hall could thoroughly photograph its disheveled condition. Dawson then used these images to reconstruct the various states of the room in order for them to be recorded as holograms. The three bar mirrors in the re-creation were replaced by three holograms revealing the state of the room at three different moments.

A scientifically and artistically precise undertaking, which Dawson fabricated, orchestrated and documented, To Absent Friends was produced in 1989 and originally commissioned by Robert and Janet Holmes a Court in 1987.

In 2005, Dawson generously donated this work to Macquarie University under the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program, representing one of the most significant artworks donated to the University.