Very Picture of Reality Found in Holography : Activities: Museum exhibit offers visitors a chance to wrap their minds around the modern merger of art and science.

There are many wonders on display at the “Images in Time & Space” holography exhibit, which is entering its final stretch at the California Museum of Science and Industry. One of the most startling sights is the lab-coated, bespectacled, eminently cheerful scientist who, hanky in hand, appears to wander after visitors, chatting with them and cleaning up any smudge-marks they leave on holographic plates.

Like a walking, talking hologram, the scientist complains good-naturedly that this is not your usual hands-on exhibit. You can try to touch a hologram, he says, but they work best if you wrap your minds--not hands--around them.

The man in the lab coat is Dr. J. William McGowan, the exhibit’s curator and president of the Assn. for the Advancement of Science in Canada--a nonprofit organization that funded the $1.5-million holographic display.

McGowan says that, ironically, many of the familiar images we like to think of as genuine holograms--three-dimensional, laser-induced representations of objects almost indistinguishable by sight from the originals--are thoroughly bogus.

For instance, the facsimile of Princess Leia projected by R2D2 in the movie “Star Wars” is, in fact, a holographic-like effect achieved with conventional blue-screen matte techniques. The lifelike images at Disneyland’s haunted house--also thought to be holograms--are achieved using double bowl-shaped mirrors.

“Disney never actually says these are holograms,” says McGowan, “but they strongly hint that they might be.”

The holograms on display at the museum are less dramatic than the ersatz trifles concocted by Hollywood. But they do suggest the medium’s potential. McGowan hopes holography will draw young people back to science.

Purists may differ as to the aesthetic value of holographic representation. But what other medium can so deftly combine the ranges of representation found in painting, photography, sculpture and film?

“Holography as an art form is certainly exploding in Canada, Europe and the Soviet Union,” says McGowan, a former chairman of the physics department at the University of Western Ontario. “It has even become big in New York.”

The young people who have flocked to the exhibit, however, have not responded to the debate over the field’s artistic merits beyond noting in the visitor’s book--as did one Virginia Harding-- that “the holograms are just too wonderful--totally rad!”

For children, the holography exhibit is like a romp through a special-effects factory. Exhibit organizers want children to look behind the curtains to figure out how the effect is pulled off.

A three-dimensional image of a Japanese doll on display defies the observer’s ability to determine whether there is, in fact, a real doll in the “window.” It sure looks like one. You can study it from a variety of angles and each perspective renders new visual information. But if you look behind the curtain where a case containing the doll ought to be, there is nothing.

“You have to see the look on the kids’ faces when they peek,” says McGowan. “All they see is empty space. Actually, the only way to ascertain you are looking at a hologram is when you stick your hand between it and the source of light illuminating it: You cannot cast a shadow on one.”

One of the holograms youngsters keep coming back to is “Microscope” by Dutch artist Walter Speirings. “Microscope” looks real enough, dramatically thrusting its viewing lens up at your eyes. When you look into the eyepiece, you are treated to a view of a microchip.

Aside from any artistic merits holograms may possess, says McGowan, the field has extensive scientific and educational uses. For example:

* A hologram of the skull of a 3,000-year-old mummy was used by archeologists as a visual aid in reconstructing the mummy’s skull.

* Medical researchers have holographically rendered the information produced by computed tomography, or CAT scans, as a three-dimensional representation of an organ’s arteries.

As the cost of holographics drops, says McGowan, holograms are increasingly carving out their three-dimensional niche in our culture. A recent cover of National Geographic magazine, for instance, used holograms to graphically depict the fragility of our planet: It pictured Earth being shattered by a bullet.

“Images in Space & Time” can be seen in the Armory Building of the California Museum of Science and Technology. The exhibit is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission: $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and $3 for children. Group and student rates are available.