My Devices

I left Al’s studio in 1978 to go independent, and thanks to a government grant I was able to study holographic special effects.

At one point during my research, I tried to make holograms of fresh plants and meats. Unfortunately, during the slow holographic process, these biological tissues are warming up and expanding, yet at the same time, they are drying out and shrinking. This microscopic amount of movement during the very long holographic exposure times, causes their holographic images to appear very dark. If I wanted their images to stay bright, I had to dry them out first. To do that, I used a freeze-drying technique.

Freeze-drying is a process for drying and preserving plants and meats. Prior to freeze-drying, dehydration was the only way to dry perishable foods. However, dehydrated foods often look dark and wrinkled, like raisins or beef jerky. By comparison, freeze-dried foods look realistic when dry.

In 1980 I built a small freeze-dryer and tested it with a fresh strawberry. After the strawberry had spent a couple of days in a cold vacuum chamber, I took it out and held it in my hand. It was dry, it had kept its original shape and colours, and weighed less than a feather.

It was beautiful. In fact, it was so beautiful it inspired me to freeze-dry all sorts of foods such as carrots, peas, tomatoes and pork chops.

I also discovered that freeze-dried tissues could be cut, sanded, glued, drilled and painted just like the balsa wood used to make model airplanes. In fact, it didn’t take me long to realize that I was looking at a new sculptural medium.