Patent ID: 8817372

Claim:
A system for modulating and displaying optical effects, said system comprising: a lighting device in modular design, including a light source configured to generate a first beam light, at least one input polarization unit (POE) individually configurable to modify polarization of said first beam of light in a manner that will establish polarized regions and which depends on a position across said first beam of light, thereby forming a second beam of light, and at least one optical modulator element (OME) adapted to and being individually actuated to parametrically modulate at least one of polarization and retardance of said second beam of light in at least one of time-dependent manner and a manner that depends on a position across said second beam of light, thereby forming a parametrically modulated beam of light with a specified spatial and/or temporally structured, yet constantly invisible internal composition; a displaying object of any shape and dimension located outside of and in any distance from the lighting device and transmitting said modulated beam of light received from the lighting device, said displaying object containing at least one object retarder unit (POB) containing at least one optically anisotropic material acting as a polarization optical image element by exhibiting a latent piece of image information in the form of an image-addressable optical path difference Γi (x,y), configured to modify a retardance of said modulated beam and to impress image information into said modulated beam, and an output polarizer (PE) adapted to transmit said modulated beam configured for the visualization of the image information impressed therein.