For what it’s worth, Vantablack isn’t a pigment, it’s a process for applying carbon nanotubes that absorb light. They don’t sell the “paint” part by itself because it requires special equipment and it finicky. They don’t sell it because then a bunch of social media influencers would try to spray their bathrooms with the stuff and make a bunch of videos about how it doesn’t live up to the hype.
The owner of the exclusive license to use it for art might be a douche who uses the licensing to make himself feel powerful, but there is a justifiable explanation for why the licensing exists in the first place.
a justifiable explanation for why the licensing exists in the first place.
“because people doing it wrong would make it look bad” is a terrible reason. I’m fairly certain I can buy an OLED TV and mess with the settings and make the picture look horrendous - time to create a restrictive license on who gets to buy TVs?
That’s not the reason. The reason is that vantablack potentially has some military applications so the company that invented it isn’t allowed to sell it. They got permission to collaborate with one artist to promote it. Amish has to ship his art to the company to get it covered in Vantablack. Everyone blaming him for a government decision just because he was an asshole about it.
The effect is also completely ruined if you handle it, and the broken off nanotubes from handling it are a serious health hazard. It’s expensive, dangerous, extremely fragile and almost impossible to clean.
But like mostly, having seen “Anish Kapoor” (which is the real name of the installation where that dickhead debuted his vantablack art), it… sucks. It’s impressive in photographs, incredibly lame in person. And, it can’t be cleaned without ruining the coating! so the dust from all those people builds up and just ew. You can see overlapping outlines, in some cases you could pretty clearly see the shadows from the contours of the coated object because of all the accumulated dust.
(also, and just on a personal note, he took nine years and did absolutely nothing conceptually interesting with it. Seriously it was the early-2000s 3D movie of art. Just one gimmick, repeated over and over with no change to the formula. “Look, it’s black”. It felt more like an ad for the lab that developed the coating than an art exhibition). It would have been cool if he’d developed the process, but we all know he didn’t, so it just fell so comically flat.)
How hard is it to paint an irregularly shaped object in vanteblack, suspend it in a weighted 5ft plexiglass sphere sitting on some ball bearings, and let viewer or motors rotate it so the changing silhouette fucks with perspective, like a 3d shadow puppet?
“That sounds like actual investment into the art. Howabout instead I vantablack a heap in the middle of a room, leave it uncovered an let people walk around it? Same effect but soooo much less work for me, Anish Kapoor’s straw-filled bodydouble”
(Seriously though, it was so lame. Even in photos, the effect was disappointing.)
Edit: My charming partner has pointed out that literally everyone that hears about Vantablack comes up with more interesting applications than this shit.
examples:
Playing around with the ambient reflected light to create images on the otherwise textureless black background
Do a darkroom, have people walk through it on a plexiglass sheet suspended above the void
Get statues of people performing elaborate sex acts on eachother. Paint them black. Put them against a black background. Call it “censorship” or something.
Bam. 30 seconds of brainstorming. And those are ignoring all the cool ideas about playing around with emissive light effects in a room with no reflections.
what the fuck is this even supposed to look like…? the entire point is that it turns an object essentially to its silhouette, and he couldn’t come up with an interesting silhouette?
He was going for "look at how this incredibly complex textured surface looks like it’s just an outline now isn’t it wild???" but failed to realize that a big pile of bullshit painted black just looks like… a big pile of bullshit painted black. It’s almost impressive how boring his ideas were. “Look the corner is triangular wooOOoooOOOooo”. He didn’t even go with something meta, like a scale model of his super reflective Bean sculpture coated in the stuff.
Just such a fuckin’ waste that vapid asshole was the artist that got to play with the stuff.
Damn just looked up the MSDS because i wouldn’t expect carbon nanotubes would be very dangerous. Probably not immediate cancer but definitely not something to handle outside a controlled environment for application. It is relatively safe once it is applied though.
For what it’s worth, Vantablack isn’t a pigment, it’s a process for applying carbon nanotubes that absorb light. They don’t sell the “paint” part by itself because it requires special equipment and it finicky. They don’t sell it because then a bunch of social media influencers would try to spray their bathrooms with the stuff and make a bunch of videos about how it doesn’t live up to the hype.
The owner of the exclusive license to use it for art might be a douche who uses the licensing to make himself feel powerful, but there is a justifiable explanation for why the licensing exists in the first place.
“because people doing it wrong would make it look bad” is a terrible reason. I’m fairly certain I can buy an OLED TV and mess with the settings and make the picture look horrendous - time to create a restrictive license on who gets to buy TVs?
That’s not the reason. The reason is that vantablack potentially has some military applications so the company that invented it isn’t allowed to sell it. They got permission to collaborate with one artist to promote it. Amish has to ship his art to the company to get it covered in Vantablack. Everyone blaming him for a government decision just because he was an asshole about it.
Carbon nanotubes are real? I thought that shit was invented for upgrades and repairs in No Man’s Sky…
Carbon nanotubes, son!
The effect is also completely ruined if you handle it, and the broken off nanotubes from handling it are a serious health hazard. It’s expensive, dangerous, extremely fragile and almost impossible to clean.
But like mostly, having seen “Anish Kapoor” (which is the real name of the installation where that dickhead debuted his vantablack art), it… sucks. It’s impressive in photographs, incredibly lame in person. And, it can’t be cleaned without ruining the coating! so the dust from all those people builds up and just ew. You can see overlapping outlines, in some cases you could pretty clearly see the shadows from the contours of the coated object because of all the accumulated dust.
(also, and just on a personal note, he took nine years and did absolutely nothing conceptually interesting with it. Seriously it was the early-2000s 3D movie of art. Just one gimmick, repeated over and over with no change to the formula. “Look, it’s black”. It felt more like an ad for the lab that developed the coating than an art exhibition). It would have been cool if he’d developed the process, but we all know he didn’t, so it just fell so comically flat.)
How hard is it to paint an irregularly shaped object in vanteblack, suspend it in a weighted 5ft plexiglass sphere sitting on some ball bearings, and let viewer or motors rotate it so the changing silhouette fucks with perspective, like a 3d shadow puppet?
“That sounds like actual investment into the art. Howabout instead I vantablack a heap in the middle of a room, leave it uncovered an let people walk around it? Same effect but soooo much less work for me, Anish Kapoor’s straw-filled bodydouble”
(Seriously though, it was so lame. Even in photos, the effect was disappointing.)
Edit: My charming partner has pointed out that literally everyone that hears about Vantablack comes up with more interesting applications than this shit.
examples:
Bam. 30 seconds of brainstorming. And those are ignoring all the cool ideas about playing around with emissive light effects in a room with no reflections.
what the fuck is this even supposed to look like…? the entire point is that it turns an object essentially to its silhouette, and he couldn’t come up with an interesting silhouette?
He was going for "look at how this incredibly complex textured surface looks like it’s just an outline now isn’t it wild???" but failed to realize that a big pile of bullshit painted black just looks like… a big pile of bullshit painted black. It’s almost impressive how boring his ideas were. “Look the corner is triangular wooOOoooOOOooo”. He didn’t even go with something meta, like a scale model of his super reflective Bean sculpture coated in the stuff.
Just such a fuckin’ waste that vapid asshole was the artist that got to play with the stuff.
wait he’s the guy responsible for the bean? damn. at least that one is interesting to look at.
Paint a cup handle, some of the side where it is attached to the cup black, so that it looks like the cup has no handle.
I award you the official title of “More Creative Than Kapoor”! It’s not a unique title, but it’s still one to bear with pride.
Plus that’s probably automatic lung cancer if you breathe it.
Damn just looked up the MSDS because i wouldn’t expect carbon nanotubes would be very dangerous. Probably not immediate cancer but definitely not something to handle outside a controlled environment for application. It is relatively safe once it is applied though.
it’s the fentanyl of huffing paint