Aren't those EPIC? So one of my passions is photography, and I wanted to dedicate my final project to a project that combines photography with music to create a magical experience. So when I was googling "magical photograpy experience" I came across this type of photography called Kirlian photography! Kirlian photography is one which uses a high voltage electric shock to create a colorful corona on an object. Thus the idea was born: can we make a real time Kirlian hologram using a song input to modulate the color of the corona?
First, I needed to look up how kirlian photography works. As seen above, an inaminate object, sitting on a piece of glass, is connected to a high voltage power supply. A metal plate beneath the glass is connected to ground. Thus the corona, made up of a plasma of electrons splitting off the leaf, is attracted down onto the glass towards the metal plate. In my case, I will add a frequency modulator to the voltage supply, which will modulate the voltage according to the song input by the user.
Next, I was also really inspired by holograms due to their incredible mysticism. But I realized an actual hologram would be perhaps difficult to achieve in real time, so I looked for a more simple effect. When I saw the above video, I knew it would be perfect. While technically not a 'hologram', it's a depiction of the Pepper's Ghost effect, which would still be really awesome to use as a projection of my object into space.
After researching kirlian photography as well as the pepper's ghost effect, I came up with a preliminary design of the device.
For the modeling part of this project, I wanted to learn a new software which I have always wanted to learn: Rhino. I definitely struggled a bit and I am still at the bottom of the learning curve, but it was super fun to explore the three-dimensionality of my perspective design - and learn about all the powerful rendering tools Rhino has to offer.
I am super excited about this project and look forward to learning all of the fabrication and prototyping techniques to make this product a reality!