HARP — Holographic Archive of Research Projects

Overview

HARP (Holographic Archive of Research Projects) is a digital library viewer designed to run on a large Pepper’s Ghost hologram pyramid projector — and also encompasses the open-source holographic display hardware itself, released as the “Ghost Box” project.

Augmented and mixed reality display technologies like the Microsoft HoloLens and Magic Leap are powerful but expensive. HARP/Ghost Box bridges this gap with 6 free and open-source laser-cut templates to build your own low-cost holographic display system using nothing more than a few laser-cut acrylic sheets, some nuts and bolts, and an existing LCD screen from a smartphone, tablet, or computer monitor. Assemble the template pieces, slot and screw them together, place a standard display on top, and your augmented/mixed reality holographic monitor is ready to go.

Visitors browse a curated archive of CMU research projects displayed as floating holographic content — making research tangible and visually engaging.

My Role

Co-developed with Yoichi Matsuyama and Zhen Bai. Designed the holographic rendering pipeline (optimized for Pepper’s Ghost pyramid geometry), interactive browsing UI, content management system, and the open-source display hardware templates.

Key Features

• 6 open-source Pepper’s Ghost display templates — works with any smartphone, tablet, or monitor
• Custom Unity rendering pipeline for 4-view hologram output
• Touch or gesture-based interactive browsing
• Content management system for loading project entries
• Laser-cut acrylic construction — affordable and reproducible

Support

Made possible with support of microgrant #2018-033 from the Frank-Ratchye Fund for Art @ the Frontier and the CMU ProSeed Internal Seed Grant (2017, 2018).

Featured on the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.