A neat material. I had a decorative mirror that unfortunately shattered, I was able to paint the backing with this and mount the shards atop. Creates a cool contrast, with the mirror reflecting nearly 100% of visible light and the the backing nearly 0%.
I also took some shards of the mirror and coated them with the black, then mounted them throughout the house. It makes it look as if some of my universe's texture shards didn't fully load or the backface culling algorithm is buggy. :)
It an interesting material to look at, the uniformity gives your eye nothing to hold on to, making it hard to focus. I recommend trying it out it for anyone interested, the small bottle is pretty cheap and covers just over a square meter. (I needed a few coats, if you preprocess the surface according to the instructions you'd probably lose less to absorption and get more coverage)
What a strange image! I fully expected the black painted portions to just be ... completely black, since after all the whole point is that it reflects nearly zero light. But that's seemingly not the case at all.
You can download the image and put a black stripe over the top of it to compare, and the difference is quite striking. My color picker tells me that the black in the center of the mirror has a lightness of about 17 out of 100 (that's L in the LCH cylindrical color space), which is really just a medium gray all things considered.
I wonder if this is due to imperfections in the paint and surface, or if the camera used just has an extremely high black level for some reason.
The apparent haze in the black portion of these photographs appears to be a product of inexpensive camera optics, likely a smartphone with a bit of finger grease on the lens. If you know what you're looking for, this haze is noticeable across the entire image but especially the left third.
This is a common artefact of cheap lenses (or, for that matter, a lens of any quality that is smudged or dirty) but it goes unnoticed by most people in most circumstances.
I imagine its a limitation of the sensor capturing the image. When you use a tiny sensor on a phone its doing lots of post-processing, including bumping saturation and brightness.
If the camera has sufficient dynamic range, then it can give a sense of the effect, even if it's not as cool as the real thing. I thought I remembered reading that small sensors are worse at dynamic range than other cameras though, so a phone picture is least likely to capture it compared to other devices.
If you’re wondering why this substance is not available to Anish Kapoor, from Wikipedia:
In 2014 Kapoor began working with Vantablack, a substance thought to be one of the least reflective substances known. Vantablack S-VIS, a sprayable paint which uses randomly-aligned carbon nanotubes and only has high absorption in the visible light band, also called the "blackest black" colour, has been exclusively licensed to Anish Kapoor's studio for artistic use.[63] His exclusive licence to the material has been criticized in the art world, but he has defended the agreement, saying: "Why exclusive? Because it's a collaboration, because I am wanting to push them to a certain use for it. I've collaborated with people who make things out of stainless steel for years and that's exclusive."[64]
Artists like Christian Furr and Stuart Semple have criticised Kapoor for what they perceive as an appropriation of a unique material, to the exclusion of others.[65][66] In retaliation, Semple developed a pigment called the "pinkest pink" and specifically made it available to everyone, except Anish Kapoor and anyone affiliated with him.[67][68] He later stated that the move was itself intended as something like performance art and that he did not anticipate the amount of attention it received.[69] In December 2016, Kapoor posted an Image on Instagram of his extended middle finger which had been dipped in Semple's pink.[70] Semple developed more products such as "Black 2.0" and "Black 3.0", which has similar qualities to Vantablack despite being acrylic, and "Diamond Dust," an extremely reflective glitter made of glass shards, all of which were released with the same restriction against Kapoor as the "pinkest pink".[71][72]
The whole "feud" is stupid. As pointed out, Kapoor has purposefully and publicly violated the terms of sale and Semple has taken no action. I can picture the two of them sharing a laugh together in an oak-paneled study over expensive cognac, amazed at how well the publicity stunt has worked.
Vantablank application is very difficult/technical, it has the usual nanoparticle health concerns, and it's used for defense applications like satellite optical camouflage so the company doesn't just sell it to any yahoo anyway. Kapoor went to the trouble of getting approved and his staff trained. Him getting exclusive approval to it is a yawn.
If you think Semple doesn't know that, well...bridge, NYC, etc.
Now that said, Kapoor is still a gigantic twatwaffle whose entire career could be best described as "physically executing all the stupid shit we did in POVRay as kids."
The Bean in Chicago? He forced the City of Chicago to station police around the Bean chasing down tourists taking pictures of themselves because it would violate his copyright.
> "That," he said, "that... is really bad for the eyes."
> It was a ship of classic, simple design, like a flattened salmon, twenty yards long, very clean, very sleek. There was just one remarkable thing about it.
> "It's so... black!" said Ford Prefect. "You can hardly make out its shape... light just seems to fall into it!"
> The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost impossible to tell how close you were standing to it.
> "Your eyes just slide off it..." said Ford in wonder
"the hue fuligin, which is darker than black, admirably erases all folds, bunchings and gatherings so far as the eye is concerned, showing only a featureless dark.
I got (still get) stuck on the overlap between moving, and steering. Moving like a fish seems to include sinuous paths, schooling with sudden acceleration and darts to the side, etc... nimbleness and speed.
I understood it was a proxy for "accelerates like/is as fast as" but found that unsatisfying.
Also, cow works to evoke large, stubborn perhaps, unresponsive... but was an odd choice in as much as few try to steer cows. Shepherd, maybe. A water buffalo or ox or even mule felt like a missed opportunity, since they are prototypically steered and there is a sense of their owners/drivers laboring against their desire to not labor...
Total Nicolson Baker rabbit hole, just a specific reading experience that has always stood out from that series. I have uttered that line countless times over the years in various contexts, including while dancing late at night on the playa.
Hah, somehow I never once made that connection. "Flies like a banana" has been an old favorite, but out of context I just never picked up on this version despite many re-reads.
I know that the second half is intended to convey that bananas are liked by fruit flies, but within the context of that saying, my brain steadfastly refuses to read it that way.
I disagree, that does not seem to fit Adams's style of humour and wordplay in the books. grandparent is just overthinking it; the image is of a ship that glides through space like a fish gliding through water, but turns clumsy and lumbering when you actually try to steer it.
I think the "intentionally stupid" interpretation is correct. I think the original answer was "to get from the left to the right", which later got shortened.
I had two jokes in a jokebook at my grandparents place that stumped me as a kid.
Waiter: How did you find your steak sir?
Man: I looked under a mushroom and there it was
I could only put it down to a terrible, Christmas cracker level pun on "much room".
The second was something like "What has three feet but no legs? A yard stick" with a picture of a ruler with three feet on it. I found that utterly perplexing... the joys of living in a metric country with predominantly imported imperial system based media!
Both took me probably over a decade to understand.
I have always interpreted "moves" in this context to relate to straight line acceleration, like when somebody says a sports car "really moves" they mean it's got quick straight-line acceleration.
Immediately after this quote Ford (or maybe Zaphod?) says something about how he had been passed by some ship at great speed, and shortly after it crashed into a planet or something. I can't remember off the top of my head. But that seems to support the interpretation that it can move fast but can't steer.
When I got my Black 3.0 bottles via the Kickstarter I turned two wooden eggs and painted one with their gold and one with Black 3.0. Here's a picture of the two taken in a very well lit workshop: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10159690521351509&set=a...
It looks like the black egg was Photoshopped out of the picture, but I promise it looked the same in person and that table used as a background is painted 20% gray.
I own a bottle of this stuff, and it's not really as amazingly black as it looks on camera. Sure, it's pretty damn black. But it's easy to see the imperfections and stuff up close. There was a video that compared it to black felt, which is pretty similar.
And no, this is not Vantablack. It's just some special acrylic that can hold a lot of black pigment, and a lot of black pigment. Vantablack needs to be "grown" with high temperatures so its usually seen on aluminum foil and such.
Overall, this is pretty cool. I could definitely believe that it's the blackest acrylic paint in the world. However it doesn't create a "black hole" or anything.
you may have missed the bit where they mention that this paint is available to everyone who is not Kapoor - Anish Kapoor signed a contract that grants him exclusive rights to use Vantablack for art projects.
I understood that - but this paint wouldn't exist if Kapoor didn't exclusively license Vantablack: Stuart Semple (maker of paint in TFA) is good-naturedly salty about it, he set out to exclude Kapoor from using his paints
> Note: By adding this product to your cart you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this material will not make it's way into the hands of Anish Kapoor.
For people not in on the drama: Anish Kapoor somehow has exclusive rights to Vanta Black, the blackest black paint, so in return, the pinkest pink and now the blackest acrylic paint are banning Anish Kapoor, who for some reason was petty enough to break the ban. I mean, if you want other people to respect your exclusive rights to vanta black, you should at least respect other color exclusivity clauses.
Nice, a niche topic I am in on. I've experimented with a few of these materials for photography.
One thing that is good to know is that the extreme darkness you typically see in demonstration videos where any sense of depth disappears, is not true to life.
Even indoors, with plain daylight shining inwards, and judging the object with your own eyes, will not give the effect. You'll perceive it as gray and extremely matte.
The difference can be explained by Youtubers picking favorable light conditions, but also because the camera capturing said video tends to have a smaller dynamic range compared to your own eyes. I believe it has been experimentally established that human beings can detect even a single photon:
So don't expect full magic. Fun can still be had though, like half-magic. I have a background painted with a very dark paint (more on the brand in a minute) with inside of it a figure painted with the same paint. With artificial lighting in my office, you can't see the figure at all. When picking up the figure, even directly looking at it won't give away any sense of depth.
Anyway, the paint I use is Musou Black, which is claimed to be darker than Black 2.0 or 3.0:
Their darkness is compared by their maximum light absorption rate, supposedly Musou has the highest: 99.4%. Do know that actual absorption depends on your method of painting. Ideally, you thinly spray paint several individual layers for maximum effect.
This same company (I promise I don't work for them) has a material I find far more intriguing. It's called Fineshut Pro.
Whereas the paints you can see as organic, meaning the way you apply it matters, the sheet is "pre-engineered". In the real world, the difference is huge. In particular the sheet also has the full darkness effect in unfavorable light conditions (direct daylight). However, only when light hits at a particular angle.
Well... the price was reasonable, something around $26 for
150 ml bottle including shipping to Pennsylvania (USA), and
I am not Anish Kapoor so I decided to give the paint a try.
Since many of us are amused by the Anish Kapoor situation, I wanted to highlight this wry comment from your link.
These ultrablack paints are all carbon nanotube based, right?
Sounds pretty carcinogenic to me. The website makes it out to be "non toxic" though. I wonder if I'm too paranoid... anyone knows what's the pigment made of, exactly?
The company's patent is a thing, but as explained down the page black 3.0 exists specifically because the company granted Anish Kapoor an exclusive artistic use license to Vantablack S-VIS, so no other visual artist can use S-VIS.
Also of note: there are variants of Vantablack with aligned and unaligned nanotubes, as well as non-nanotubes-based variants (the VBx series).
There is also a non-surrey nanotubes-based paint called Singularity, created by Nanolab in partnership with Jason Chase, and an other "very black" non-nanotubes paint called Musou.
I don't know how Musou compares to 3.0, and last time I'd checked Singularity was slightly more reflective than Vanta. They do have the avantage (for artists) of being available though, and Musou and 3.0 are pretty normal paints.
To nit pick a bit on "so no other visual artist can use S-VIS"
It is not that the company made a deal to exclude other artists, but that they made an exception to allow one artist.
You as an individual, and likely you as a corporation, can't buy Vantablack. You have to provide technical drawings and a detailed writeup of your product, submit it for review to the company, they send it to the UK government, etc. until eventually they tell you it will be tens of thousands of dollars to paint something the size of a Netgear router and that only their paint shop can apply the coating.
What is Vantablack used for? Besides Anish Kapoor's art, is there any information on what else it has been incorporated in? I imagine some of its uses are classified, but are there some other ones that are known?
It is used on satellites near the optics to prevent stray light from bouncing into the sensor.
Despite the common belief that spy sats are covered in the stuff, it causes quite a bit of heat absorption and hostile governments have better methods than a SkyMall telescope.
Well, I wouldn't assume flour is harmless in an industrial setting. For example, there's "popcorn lung", (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obliterative_bronchiolitis) you don't think of artificial butter flavored popcorn as a toxic terror, but in a factory, it can have severe effects over a period of time.
In positions we talk about the LD50. When it comes to environmental exposure of things like dust to incidents of lung damage, I'm not sure how we measure said effects. Yea, breathing any significant amount of dusts can be harmful, be we should be very concerned for products where insignificant amounts of material can be harmful.
I've wondered about drywall/gypsum dust. The first time I was on a construction site, I was pretty young and nobody was insisting I wear a mask so I didn't at first.
They could have used matte black tempera (Sanford's IIRC). Back in the day, I played around with (analog) photocopier rendition of pen-and-ink drawings and found that large black inked areas developed faded centers. Coating the ink there with said tempera fixed the dropouts.
I have used culturehustle's matte paint on most of the stuff in front of me - monitor bezels, speakers, desk - and it makes sure that the lit things appear to be floating in space at night.
If only. The day real fuligin is available for purchase is the day I discard all other clothing and prance around in an oversized fuligin cape twenty four hours a day for the rest of my life.
No, it's because most of the "blackest" finishes are extremely delicate, as they rely on a sort of micro-velvet structure to trap light as well as absorbing light. There are relatively sturdy solutions - fabrics, mostly - but they tend to be absolute dust magnets, and look rather ratty in a short time unless kept scrupulously clean. Between the high maintenance and the immediate grunge regardless of maintenance, they don't sell well. (Photographers, on the other hand, love the stuff despite the fact that there's an extra few minutes doing a detailed tidying before every shot.)
It looks pretty good, but you can't put a clearcoat on it, so it's not durable enough to actually use as a keyboard. Still a fun item to have on your shelf though.
Sure, I guess I'm imagining a thick enough coating where it looks like a very dark featureless surface under a transparent layer, which I think would look pretty cool. But that's not really clear coat so much as it is epoxy.
As others have pointed out, this will only work until you touch it. I use the Das Keyboard ultimate, which is matte black and, while partially reflective (and moreso on the keycaps where finger oil accumulates) it's still pretty great-looking.
I mean if you wanted black box for photographing things and wanted to minimise bounce lighting. This paint guarantees that only direct light would illuminate the subject.
I may be stupid and missing the point - but this part from the BMW page made me laugh: "This nanostructure paint finish, among the blackest ever made by man, tricks the viewer’s perception of the car as a three-dimensional shape." -- oh, the magic. You paint a 3D object with this paint and it looks 3D.
I don't see anything wrong with the sentence. The black paint tricks the viewer's normal perception of the car as a three-dimensional shape, to make it seem like it's two-dimensional. Are you understanding it differently?
Yes. The idea is that without being able to differentiate features, a 3d object painted with it looks basically like a silhouette, so your brain interprets it as a 2d object.
Photon absorption chemistry often correlates with electron delocalization. Such chemicals can be reactive and may strip electrons from your DNA if ingested, inhaled, or through dermal contact.
Be careful about skin contact and especially inhalation.
There's a lot of backstory to this... it's a dig against Vantablack, which Anish Kapoor (famous sculptor) managed to buy exclusive rights for using in art:
Indeed, and it looks like 3.0 still maintains this feud:
> *Note: By adding this product to your cart you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this material will not make it's way into the hands of Anish Kapoor.
> In 2017, Semple also released a cherry-scented version of the Vantablack pigment exclusively licensed to Kapoor.
and thought that Semple had mixed cherry-scent with Vantablack and licensed it to Kapoor exclusively. It would have been an interesting move, particularly from a legal perspective, although I would have expected a different scent than cherry...
So I think you're missing that first, this was motivated as a troll, and second, in art variations of black absolutely do matter and are not simple bike shedding.
The troll happened because an artist named Anish Kapoor was able to negotiate exclusive access to a patented black paint/coating based on carbon nanotubes named Vantablack. He's the only artist allowed to use it globally. That didn't sit well with some people who decided to troll back.
I haven't done any art since I was in my late teens, but at the time a couple of my works were focused on very dark subjects. I found ordinary acrylic paint just wasn't black enough for what I wanted. Eventually I found that spraying liquid India ink with an airbrush repeatedly got the effect I was looking for.
This isn't bikeshedding at all. In art and design, black has never been just one color. It's always been a choice of which ones to use. Here are some examples from printing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_black
Yes, I painted my home theater “black”, and ended up down a rabbit hole of “well, which black??”. Ended up painting the ceiling and trim a slightly different black than the walls. Probably only I am consciously aware of the difference.
At this point the different blacks are less about color and more about finish/reflectivity. Even if you decide to paint your bikeshed a lovely Celeste green you'd still have to choose whether you want eggshell or semigloss.
I also took some shards of the mirror and coated them with the black, then mounted them throughout the house. It makes it look as if some of my universe's texture shards didn't fully load or the backface culling algorithm is buggy. :)
It an interesting material to look at, the uniformity gives your eye nothing to hold on to, making it hard to focus. I recommend trying it out it for anyone interested, the small bottle is pretty cheap and covers just over a square meter. (I needed a few coats, if you preprocess the surface according to the instructions you'd probably lose less to absorption and get more coverage)