The battle to own the world's blackest black

HostThere's this video of a piece of wrinkled aluminum foil that I just can't stop thinking about. It's all bunched up and messy, but it's coated in this incredibly dark material. The weird thing is, as soon as the light hits it, all those wrinkles just disappear. It looks like someone cut a hole out of the video and left a flat, black gap. It makes your brain feel like it's glitching out.

GuestThat happens because your brain uses light and shadows to figure out the shape of things. When those cues go away, your eyes just stop working the way they should. That material is called Vantablack, and it's the darkest thing humans have ever made. It's not really a paint or a pigment in the way we usually think about them. It's actually a forest of tiny, vertical tubes made of carbon.

HostA forest of tubes? How does a bunch of tubes stop you from seeing the shape of the foil?

GuestWell, normally, light hits a surface and bounces off into your eyes. That's how you see the world. But with this stuff, the light goes into that forest of tubes and gets trapped. It bounces around inside there until it basically runs out of energy and turns into heat. It absorbs almost all the light that hits it. About ninety nine point nine six percent, to be exact. So, there's no light left to bounce back to you. No highlights, no shadows, nothing. A three dimensional object starts to look like a flat silhouette or a literal hole in space.

HostSo this was originally made for art?

GuestNot at all. It was grown in a lab by a company called Surrey NanoSystems for very high tech jobs. They use it for things like satellite tools and stealth tech where you need to stop light from reflecting to keep things precise. But then the art world found out about it, and things got very messy. In twenty sixteen, it came out that a famous sculptor named Anish Kapoor had secured the exclusive rights to use Vantablack for art.

HostWait, you're saying one person bought the rights to a color? That sounds like something out of a movie. Artists have always had their secret techniques, but owning a whole piece of the light spectrum feels like a huge stretch.

GuestThat's why the creative world was so angry. Usually, an artist might keep a specific mix of oil paints secret, but they don't own the legal rights to the color blue itself. Kapoor argued that the material is so hard to work with that you need his specific studio and their tools to apply it correctly. But for everyone else, it felt like an act of gatekeeping. No other artist on earth was allowed to use it. It was like he privatized a part of the light we can see.

HostSo what did the rest of the art community do? I imagine they didn't just take that sitting down.

GuestThey definitely did not. The loudest voice in the room was another artist named Stuart Semple. He thought the idea of owning a color was a total insult to the spirit of sharing ideas. So, he decided to fight back with a bit of performance art. He created what he called the world’s pinkest pink. It was this super bright, glowing pink powder, and he made it available to everyone for just a few dollars.

HostI'm guessing he didn't let Kapoor buy any.

GuestRight. He put it on his website, but there was a catch. Before you could finish your order, you had to agree to a mandatory legal disclaimer. You had to confirm that you weren't Anish Kapoor, that you weren't affiliated with him, and that you would never let the pink paint fall into his hands. It became a viral sensation. People loved the idea of an open source color that was meant for everyone except that one guy.

HostThat sounds pretty funny, but did it actually change anything about the black paint?

GuestWell, it definitely made things personal. Kapoor eventually got his hands on some of that pink powder anyway. He posted a photo on social media showing his middle finger dipped in the pink pigment with a caption that said, up yours.

HostWow. So it really did turn into a schoolyard fight.

GuestIt did, but that feud led to something great for everyone else. Semple started working with scientists and thousands of other artists to develop a new kind of black. They called it Black three point zero. It's an ultra matte acrylic paint that anyone can buy and use without needing a high tech lab. It mimics that abyss look of Vantablack but it's accessible to everyone. The whole rivalry shifted the focus from private technology to making sure any artist can play with the void.

GuestNow, anyone can experiment with making objects look like holes in reality without needing a military contract or a specific studio.

HostThe wrinkles in the foil are gone, and the void finally belongs to everyone.