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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 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.
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.
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
The artist is Stuart Semple.
Not sure why we’re only hearing the name of the lesser cool artist.
Yeah I thought semple was cool too until it became apparent he’s a grifter. He started a Kickstarter years ago to build an adobe replacement suite of software. I believe he claimed there would be test builds available several times for at least two years:
He basically has been unresponsive for months at a time and has set many deadlines that haven’t been hit. I don’t think that software will ever happen and I don’t think he ever truly planned to build it.
I think this is being overly judgemental. He originally created his reputation by going to war against Pantone, a company which holds a near monopoly on colours. At first it was patches to get Adobe to use colours it locked users out of, which he then expanded into Freetone, a colour palette that is free for anyone except Adobe.
Looking at his other behaviour (such as legally changing his name to Amish Kapoor to piss off Anish Kapoor who sued him for colour infringement) suggests that he’s messy, rather than a grifter.
Pinkest Pink | FREETONE | LIBERATING COLOURS SINCE 2016 | CultureHustle - https://culturehustle.com/products/freetone
It’s “overly judgemental” to wait years for someone to fulfill a promise only to have them consistently give bullshit excuses and never remotely follow through? Nah, fuck him. I don’t care how he “started his career”. I can tell you have not invested time reading about this scenario.
That’s every kickstarter
Even if true, so what?
But it’s not. I’ve given to two Kickstarters and got precisely what was promised both times
He made a competing black that anyone can buy, too.
Absorbs all the light in the universe as well as other universes
Nice, finally something to fight Superman with.
I’m getting the feeling he really doesn’t like Anish. Every page I’ve looked at has Anish mentioned. The anal apocalypse is especially for him. The glow in the dark pigment is free, if you can prove that you are associated with him to share the light.
Do they have some big feud going on?
most artists dislike the entire idea of copyrighting a color for the singular purpose of limiting its use to one person. some people care more about copyrights than others.
Pretty sure vantablack was patented not copyrighted. It’s also possible that is wasn’t either and just was really hard to produce. Afaik vantablack isn’t really designed to be be painted and requires quite specialised equipment.
They sell it as a paint, however : “Controversy arose when Surrey Nanosystems granted Anish Kapoor exclusive rights to use Vantablack in artistic applications. Many artists voiced opposition to his monopoly over the substance.”
Thats the beef. If you try to get or use it, Amish Kapoor will typically take legal action.
Also, hes never really made any compelling art with it either.
He’s the guy who made that big silver sculpture in Chicago. He intensely dislikes that everyone calls it The Bean because he named it Cloud Gate. Really, he made a giant sculpture in a public place that is shaped like a massive shiny kidney bean and is big mad that people call it a bean. Seems like hes kind of a thin skinned baby.
If I remember correctly the company that gave him permission to use vantablack never gave him the ownership of it.
So presumably Amish couldn’t do anything personally about it.
This is drama from a decade ago so don’t take it as gospel: Iirc, the contract Kapoor signed with Surrey gave him the right to enforce the patent when used in art or aesthetic design applications. I can’t remember if he sues as an involved party on behalf of Surrey or if he somehow has the right to sue directly, but the effect is the same. Basically Surrey didn’t want to deal with enforicng it, and signed over that as part of the exclusivity deal.
The company that makes the paint version of VantaBlack licensed it only to one guy to use, the art community felt that was unfair. Thus the pink, and I think a new black etc.etc.
does anyone like Anish Kapoor?
No
Website seems to force a login to even browse the store?
Weird, works fine on mobile for me
Are you already logged in / automatically logging in to shopify?
nope, don’t even have an account with them
Could be a vpn or location issue? It’s just a listing for another super matte black this artist made to fuck with Anish.
Same. What a ridiculous practice.
I went straight in with no login or sign-up needed.
Seems like only certain people are affected and nothing to do with website practices.
Something seems to be sending me to shopify when the page loads
Culture Hustle’s chrome makes not metal things look like metal, not metal colored, look like metal. Also Semple’s glow pigments are intense.
Disaster of a website. Just why?
I don’t know how to answer that question. Because of the tides? Because of a love of dance? Because they knew you were coming?
it forces a login just to browse it - I hope it’s unintentional
I think it’s a region thing, I wasn’t blocked. Someone here posted a screenshot for those who can’t get in.
I can’t see specifics of what they sell without “signing in”? Fuck that.
Mobile looks fine enough
Really? I just get an immediate login wall on mobile.
Ya here it is in part
Same here, it launches me into a “how do you want to login” page
That’s weird. I just get the homepage
But first you must face the Captcha test to prove that you are, in fact, not Anish Kapoor.
Meanwhile Kapoor, not using a VPN - “Curses! Foiled again!”
EDIT: Has this ever happened to you? That’s why I use AnishKapoorVPN, you are just a few clicks away from being able to jump through so many hurdles it’ll make your head spin.
Try AnishKapoorVPN today, and tell them Anish Kappor sent ya, use the checkout code VantaVantaNyahNyahNyah.I see this posted a lot and I get the feeling that this guy just makes a big deal about the other guy being an asshole so he can make money for himself. He seems like just as big of an asshole haha
Who knows. It’s harmless drama if it’s a marketing gimmick, or they could just be rivals playing off each other. Childish, sure, but spite can be motivating — the guy does make great quality products.
Like James Randi and Uri Geller. Randi made a career out of debunking snake oil salesfolks but there was no question about how much he despised Geller.
Yeah his paint is good. I got the black though and it’s just a matt black lol. Maybe a little darker than some other matt blacks.
The pinkest pink sure seems pink but there could be a pinker pink how do you measure pinkness?
I’m more of a hot pink person myself. I would try the hottest pink for sure.
Serious question: If his black is the blackest and absorbs all light, why does that gadget/ trinket in the second video on this site cast a gray shadow? To my understanding, it should either cast a completely black shadow, or no shadow at all.
The reason the shadow is gray is because light is bouncing off the other surfaces in the environment. The shadowed area isn’t receiving direct light, but it is receiving reflected indirect light.
I don’t know where you got that idea.
Your logic assumes there’s only one light source, no atmospheric dispersion, light is a particle, and everything around the object is non-reflective. And it’s moved to a white background, something we know reflects light.
Edit: This sounds bitchier than I intended so I’m adding in: questions are great and I upvoted you for it.
Imagine how shadows on earth would look if our sun was actually a cosmic LED bulb array with 9 bulbs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbra%2C_penumbra_and_antumbra
Any light source they’re using isn’t a single beam of photons, it’s a cast cone of light. Actually multiple cones because mostly it’s LED array lighting.
So there’s an (effectively) infinite number of shadows because it’s being hit by photons coming from multiple angles, from multiple little light cones.
The shadows form a distributed pattern behind.
There’s other factors like scattering within the media the photons travel through (air) as well as refraction.
e: I tried to make it make more sense. Its about understanding that a light sources are cones of light hitting from many angles at once.
On the backdrop you mean? That would be from light refracting off of other places in the background and converging behind the gadget, partially illuminating the shadow.
Oh wow, what a huge memory triggered! The total prioritization of whiz-bang on that site.
Shot me back to 1998(?ish?) where I met an absolutely amazing artist who started with street and scene art, huge airbrushed murals, and moved into digital media. He was an absolutely drug-addled, unprofessional lunatic. But also the best, if you could ever as the creative lead, draw a circle around him. We made a lot of games that were very bog-standard mechanically, but he took the creative design to places nobody had been in terms of visual game design. I love/hated him and I affectionately called him Mad Dog and it stuck at work lol
This website reminded me of his personal side project Dr Wash. I remember him showing off his site to me, which at the time was truly a marvel of what could be done artistically on the Web. After browsing every section and page, I was left with one question to him: What is it you actually do or sell?? I meant it! lol
This memory hit me when it took me 30 seconds of mystery meat navigation, then no-scrollbar but need to infini-scroll down to hopefully find textual information that actually says something. Etc. Some things never change haha
The SRGB color range isn’t even close to bright enough to display how pink this color is, in case anyone’s like “that’s just pink”
How does one see it in person?
I bought some lol. It’s a truly pretty, perfect pink.
I’ve made an unspeakable number of purchases from Culture Hustle over the last couple years for a variety of pigments and specialty paints (like Black 4.0 and glow in the dark and UV reactive pigments.) I paint board game minis for fun lol.
I was just thinking, I wonder how these would look used on minis. Do you have any photos to share using these pigments?
Unfortunately I haven’t used any image hosting sites in years, so I did this quick. I’m open to recommendations!
That’s pretty interesting in the different lights. What colors did you use here?
I used a bright white base coat with heavy application of a black wash, letting it pool to the edges of the robes. Then I went in with the Black 4.0 under the robes and inside the hood. Most visible on the back, I also used it for those branching “crack” like details. The base is also Black 4.0, but I took the picture under a REALLY bright light (and in the first image you can see the spots where I was too impatient to wait for the base to fully dry lol.) Under regular lighting the black is incredibly flat and the underside of the robes really does disappear.
The lanterns are painted silver with a black wash. For the glowing part of the lantern, I started with a bright white base, then layered the blue glow in the dark pigment, then a clear gloss over it.
I loved working on that piece, even though I often felt like screaming trying to get the right angles to paint one part and not fuck up something else lol.
It’s The Watcher from Kingdom Death Monster.
Ooh, that’s cool as hell! You’re really good at that. I’m jealous, haha. Thanks for sharing it with us! :)
Perfect pink? Don’t think I’ve ever been sold on something so effortlessly quick
From experience, you walk into the barbie isle in Walmart.
I dunno. The Tom Scott video said it’s like doubling the jump from grey to the color you see.
I suspect Stuart would be able to assist you: https://stuartsemple.com/project/worlds-pinkest-pink-50g-powdered-paint-stuart-semple/
Does anyone have an HDR photo?
HDR isn’t enough. Or at least anything a TV can display.
You can probably find light wave analysis or something though.
Yeah, fuck him! That gatekeeping asshole.
Luckilly, I can stare into the abyss without help. But still, fuck you! You don’t copyright COLORS you fucking twat.
I want the pinkest green. Or the greenest pink? I forgot how it works but one of those colors is technically the other color where it lies on the light spectrum and our brains just freak out and create a different color.
Pink technically doesn’t exist as a part of light spectrum, yeah. It’s just what our brains make up when you light up blue and red receptors at enough brightness
I will never remember his name. He will always be The Bean Guy to me.
Flick it.
thought the issue is that ventablack is extremely dangerous to use, and Anish was allowed to use it as a publicity stunt and with proper liability forms. it’s not a paint that should be available to the public.
however, the problem is that Anish is a bit of a cunt about it and no one likes him.
If the story is true, Anish Kapoor got his hands on some and dipped his finger in the pink, flipping off Stuart.
In response, Stuart released a glitter made of shards of glass. Lol
Apparently Anish posted that on his instagram! Mentioned on his wiki page under “vantablack controversy”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anish_Kapoor
It gets funnier and funnier. Is this how artists fight?
Honey Lemons facial expression makes her look like a horror movie character in this frame lol
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