philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The Worlds “Blackest Black” and the Hilarious Artist Feud Behind It

The whole thing started over a a substance called Vantablack. Developed first at the United Kingdom’s National Physical Laboratory and manufactured by Surrey NanoSystems , the substance isn’t so much a color as it something of a blackhole. It absorbs 99.965 percent of visible light and literally traps it until it dissipates into heat. In fact, it’s not even technically a pigment. It’s a lab grown series of nano-tubes. The substance has lots of practical scientific applications, like keeping light out of telescopes for example. Though, someone realized it might have artistic purposes as well, and a slightly altered version was developed (just ever so less “black” and known as Vantablack S-VIS).

The color was then licensed exclusively for artistic purposes to the studios of Anish Kapoor. Meaning that effectively he was the only artist in the entire world who could use it. It’s slightly ironic considering some of Kapoor’s most famed work is with reflective materials (indeed they’re prime art selfie destinations).

As a way of sticking it to Kapoor, he developed a line of pigments including the world’s “pinkest pink” and “glitteriest glitter” and said they were available for any artist in the entire world to use… except Kapoor.

Well, as it turned out Semple did actually team up with scientists to create a black that may not be the “blackest black” but is still pretty damn black as far as practical art supplies are concerned. He calls it “black 2.0” and it does create the neat visual trick of rendering objects coated in it flat.

Surrey NanoSystems recently announced that they created another very black-black called VBx1. Unlike the fragile Vantablack, it is “a solid coating that is far more tolerant.”

See the full story here: https://www.wmagazine.com/story/anish-kapoor-stuart-semple-blackest-black