Vantablack is a pigment that reaches a level of darkness that’s so intense, it’s kind of upsetting. It’s so black it’s like looking at a hole cut out of the universe. “Vantablack is striking when you look at it… because it [doesn’t look] like something is colored black. It looks like an absence. It disappears,” explains Adam Rogers, a journalist who writes for Wired. Vantablack swallows nearly all visible light and gives back no reflection, so every contour or crease of whatever it’s applied to disappears. It has this odd effect of making something look two dimensional, while at the same time as if you can fall right through it. [...]
What really caught his attention Jensen was the amount of interest that came from another field in desperate need of a super-black pigment: the art world. In that first couple of weeks alone, Surrey Nanosystems received over 400 inquiries from artists wanting to use it in their work. Working with artists was just not something Surrey Nanosystems was equipped to do because Vantablack was incredibly hard to work with. Carbon nanotubes had to be grown at about 430 degrees centigrade, which is still hot enough to damage most materials. CNTs were also very delicate and could scrape off easily but most importantly, any collaboration with artists would take up time and tech resources since anything coated with Vantablack would have to be grown in Surrey Nanosystem’s reactors. Working with artists just didn’t seem like a practical move for the company… until they met Anish Kapoor. [...]
Ben Jensen is quick to point out that artists being protective of technology isn’t actually a new thing in the art world. Artists have been creating their own oil paints since the Renaissance and they were under no obligation to share their material with competitors. Jensen explains, “People feel if something exists, they have an automatic right to it… The reality is the world has never been like that. You go back to when Turner was creating his blacks and you go up to him, say, ‘Hey, you created an amazing black. I want it.’ You would have been laughed out of the art scene.” Stuart Semple sees it in a different way. He believes that sharing knowledge and technology can only move the arts community forward. It was a clear cut disagreement on how the world operated vs. how one thought the world should operate.
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