If you visit the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock, between now and March 6, be prepared to be shot at, poked in the eye by pencils and threatened by hidden knives and protruding tongues. A visit to Holograms 2 is an experience of the versatility of the medium.

Try to leave any self-consciousness at home and sway from side to side and move up and down in front of the exhibits. If you follow that advice, you will enter the surreal and wonderful 3D world of holographic art. It is good fun and should appeal to all age groups.

The effects of the 60 exhibits can be beautiful, mysterious, dramatic or comic. An example of the beautiful is Crystal Beginnings by Steve Benton who invented white light transmission while working for the Polaroid Corporation. This piece was devised as a scientific experiment but its optical qualities mark it out as a work of art in its own right.

Holography is a form of photography that allows an image to be recorded in three dimensions. The technique, bending two beams of light, was discovered, in 1947, by Dennis Gabor, while researching the electron microscope in Rugby.

There is a continuously running film explaining the process of making holograms. Holography really took off, in the 1960s, with the invention of laser light. Dennis Gabor would have been amazed by the manipulated images in this show, the result of the creative imagination of artists using the technique to create 3D visual effects not possible by any other means.

The first exhibit is a gorgeous glass bowl —except it isn’t a glass bowl but an image of one that seems to reveal its quality from within and without. Facing you is the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa (Jeffrey Robb, pictured) and David Pizzanelli’s Dorothea, blue moon eclipse is also bathed in mystery. The universal inspiration and the vivid colours are apparent in Ganesh and Angkor. The digital holograms are intriguing Metallic Voodoo talks to you.

If I had to choose a favourite, a contender would be Best Friend by Patrick Boyd based on the song performed by Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

The exhibition has been drawn from the collection of Jonathan Ross (not the TV presenter). Holograms 2 is a free exhibition. Tuesday to Saturday 10am-5pm Sun 2-5pm. For information go to www.tomocc.org.uk