[TeMPOraL]

Yup. My first thought exactly.

Iff this laser trickery worked permanently, then you'd basically have a prototype Star Trek replicator right there. Feed garbage in, out comes something useful.

If the laser trickery worked temporarily (say, on the timescales of minutes), then perhaps this could be a small step towards creating Star Trek style holograms. Vent inert gas in, reshape it into interesting stuff, pulse it up from time to time to keep it from decaying.

Though I imagine sensory and computational requirements of such a thing would hit the limit of what's physically possible in our universe.

[bogwog]

We just need to figure out how to convert poop back into food.

[TeMPOraL]

... in a simpler way than spreading it around and letting the ecosystem recycle it.