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Black 3.0 – The blackest black acrylic paint
- inlikealamb 5y agoThere'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: https://www.wired.com/story/vantablack-anish-kapoor-stuart-semple/ https://www.wired.com/story/vantablack-anish-kapoor-stuart-s...
- jchw 5y agoIndeed, 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.
- fennecfoxen 5y agoFor those who haven't heard of him before, Kapoor did the Bean in Chicago.
- ThePadawan 5y agoJust bear with me here. Wouldn't it be funny if people only knew him as the guy famously slammed for getting a monopoly on Vantablack? If at all.
- kwhitefoot 5y agoApart from a wonky bit of space frame crap the black colour foolishness is in fact all I know about him.
- IncRnd 5y agoApparently he has done tons of work. His website is a straight list of image links left to right and up & down. https://anishkapoor.com/ https://anishkapoor.com/
- tmmx 5y agoAnish Kapoor is not happy that people are calling it the bean. Cloudgate is the official name.
- _jal 5y ago...Another good reason to call it the bean.
- blamazon 5y agoAh, so you mean the official name is “the bean”?
- bbarnett 5y agoThe Amish grow lots of beans, and I doubt they like nanotubes.
- inlikealamb 5y agoMost people will remember Anish Kapoor as the bean guy
- SamBam 5y agoI misread this (ambiguous) line at first > 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...
- tenaciousDaniel 5y agoI really want a mechanical keyboard coated with this.
- ksec 5y agoAre there any piratical purpose in doing it?
- stevenpetryk 5y agoYou can paint your black flag even blacker. Think of the plundering!
- Pet_Ant 5y agoI 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.
- robbedpeter 5y agoIt'll make yer skull 'n crossbones really pop, matey!
- tenaciousDaniel 5y agoNot at all, would just look cool (in theory). Unfortunately the replies prove that it's impossible, at least right now.
- Eric_WVGG 5y agoUnfortunately surfaces coated with this (or Vantablack) cannot be touched, the coatings that creates the effect are too delicate. It's basically good for art projects and scientific applications.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eropple 5y agoSemple also sells an acrylic black paint which, while not this black, is pretty dang black and can be touched.
- Sebastian_09 5y agoseems it absorbs a bit less light than vantablack but the comeback at Kapoor is quite fun https://www.dezeen.com/2019/02/05/black-3-0-stuart-semple-anish-kapoor-vantablack/ https://www.dezeen.com/2019/02/05/black-3-0-stuart-semple-an...
- dang 5y agoThis is in the feature list of the OP too: • Not available to Kapoor
- marcodiego 5y agoSo dark it makes difficult to note relief. Maybe it is a good choice to paint telescope tubes' interior.
- samatman 5y agoThat's the whole idea. It wouldn't be much of an absorber of all visible radiation which hits it, if it bounced enough back to make out textural details.
- sjackso 5y agoIf you're interested, here's a thread of telescope nerds discussing that exact usage: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/692954-how-black-is-the-black-30/ https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/692954-how-black-is-the-b...
- notJim 5y agoWell... 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.
- amifty 5y agoBlackest black explains!!!!
- dan_pixelflow 5y agoThere's a Tom Scott video about another one of Stuart's products, and an explanation for the Anish Kapoor message: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NzVmtbPOrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NzVmtbPOrM
- Tsiklon 5y agoThe Stuart Semple vs. Anish Kapoor “beef” is one of my favorites to read about, utterly harmless and unbelievably petty, it entertains me to no end.
- domenici2000 5y agoThanks, came back for this hehe
- folago 5y agoFulgin color straight from "the book of the new Sun" saga.
- emptysongglass 5y agoIf 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.
- KozmoNau7 5y agoIt would be horrendously hot, so maybe only use it as a winter coat.
- kissgyorgy 5y agoThis looks like quite confusing to the eye (brain).
- airstrike 5y agohttps://www.wired.com/story/vantablack-anish-kapoor-stuart-semple/ https://www.wired.com/story/vantablack-anish-kapoor-stuart-s...
- cbsmith 5y agoBlack 3.0 has been around for quite a while, the newest thing is Black Mirror: https://www.culturehustleusa.com/collections/black/products/black-mirror-250ml https://www.culturehustleusa.com/collections/black/products/...
- alfalfasprout 5y agoThe finish looks quite bad though in that shiny paint. Though maybe it can be hand sanded and polished to a piano black finish.
- cbsmith 5y agoI think it's really hard to judge from a photograph, but Semple is, if nothing else, a fantastic promoter, so your skepticism is warranted.
- runawaybottle 5y agoHere is the BMW Vantablack: https://www.bmwusa.com/concept-vehicles/vantablack-x6.html https://www.bmwusa.com/concept-vehicles/vantablack-x6.html I believe it is illegal since no one can see it at night. Video: https://youtube.com/shorts/17VlV62q5r0?feature=share https://youtube.com/shorts/17VlV62q5r0?feature=share
- fabbari 5y agoI 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 am guessing they meant 'two-dimensional'.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- frosted-flakes 5y agoI 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?
- mdorazio 5y agoYes. 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cirrus3 5y agoThe sentence is fine and means what you think it should. You are reading it wrong.
- 5y ago
- isoprophlex 5y agoThese 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?
- whatshisface 5y agoGood point. Carbon nanotubes are carcinogenic. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5799097/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5799097/
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoWell, dont eat paint chips.
- pixl97 5y agoMore about the dust that is generated when the product is used.
- perl4ever 5y agoIs there any kind of dust that's really healthy to breathe? I imagine pretty much everything that exist in tiny particles has microscopic sharp edges.
- whatshisface 5y agoOn one end of the spectrum there's flour, on the other end there's asbestos.
- perl4ever 5y agoWell, I wouldn't assume flour is harmless in an industrial setting. For example, there's "popcorn lung", (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obliterative_bronchiolitis 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.
- a9h74j 5y agoI understand the purposes, but from another angle: Bikeshedding has reached a new extreme. We are debating what color of black to use.
- femto113 5y agoAt 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.
- Igelau 5y agoThis 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_black
- aksss 5y agoYes, 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.
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y agoSo 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.
- a9h74j 5y ago
- meetups323 5y agoA 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)
- Navarr 5y agoI would love to see a picture of this
- sinalc0 5y agoSecond this
- zmix 5y agoYes, photos, please :-)!
- lisper 5y agoA photo could not possibly capture the effect. Turn your monitor off and you will see what a digital photo of this black would look like.
- jjeaff 5y agoSure it would. And capturing the contrast between the regular wall and the black would give you much better results that turning your monitor off too. There are lots of cool photos out there of super black material.
- lapetitejort 5y ago
- kingofpandora 5y ago> "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
- drewzero1 5y ago> "Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow."
- aaroninsf 5y agoThis line always perplexed me as a kid. 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.
- parsecs 5y agoI 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sangnoir 5y ago> And no, this is not Vantablack. 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.
- stavros 5y agoI think OP means "this is nowhere close to Vantablack", not "do not think this is actually Vantablack".
- sangnoir 5y agoI 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
- SamBam 5y agoRight... And all GP was saying was that this is not as black as Vantablack.
- dang 5y agoSome past related threads, including about this blackest black and the other blackest blacks: Guy Creates Darkest Room with the Blackest Black Paint - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25758913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25758913 - Jan 2021 (1 comment) Another Artist Made His Own Superblack–and Now It’s Even Blacker - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25402799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25402799 - Dec 2020 (2 comments) MIT creates blackest black that is darker than Vantablack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21118636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21118636 - Sept 2019 (17 comments) Black Blacker Than Vantablack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21093784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21093784 - Sept 2019 (94 comments) New carbon nanotube-metal hierarchical material is 10x darker than Vantablack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973667 - Sept 2019 (68 comments) BMW unveils “blackest black” car sprayed with Vantablack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20820000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20820000 - Aug 2019 (28 comments) Vantablack, one of the darkest substances known - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19106541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19106541 - Feb 2019 (4 comments) BLACK 3.0 BETA blackest black acrylic paint - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19044406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19044406 - Jan 2019 (2 comments) One Artist Has a Monopoly on the World’s Blackest Black Pigment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16873089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16873089 - April 2018 (1 comment) The World’s “Blackest Black” Makes Its Debut–On a Building - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16342651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16342651 - Feb 2018 (1 comment) Anish Kapoor is given exclusive rights to Vantablack, the purest black paint - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11209692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11209692 - March 2016 (4 comments) New Super-Black, Light-Absorbing Material Looks Like a Hole in Reality - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8058840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8058840 - July 2014 (7 comments) Scientists have developed a material so dark that it can't be seen - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8030459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8030459 - July 2014 (42 comments) Scientists develop material so dark you can't see it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027446 - July 2014 (7 comments)
- donio 5y agoA recent kickstarter, no idea how they compare: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/311352786/horizon-black https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/311352786/horizon-black
- thanatos519 5y agoI 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.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago> 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. I love drama...
- wodenokoto 5y agoFor 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. https://www.dezeen.com/2016/12/30/anish-kapoor-uses-stuart-semple-worlds-pinkest-pink-despite-ban/ https://www.dezeen.com/2016/12/30/anish-kapoor-uses-stuart-s...
- garrickvanburen 5y agoA very fun, very NSFW podcast that goes deep into the drama http://citationpod.com/episode/the-blackest-black/ http://citationpod.com/episode/the-blackest-black/
- davidkunz 5y agoCan't wait to mix it with the whitest white to get the grayest gray.
- MikeDelta 5y agoMan, wish the Rolling Stones had this back in the day when they wanted to paint that door.
- crb3 5y agoThey 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.
- fleddr 5y agoNice, 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: https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-human-eye-photon-20160719-snap-story.html https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-human-e... 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: https://www.ko-pro.black/product/musou-black-paint/ https://www.ko-pro.black/product/musou-black-paint/ 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.
- Scene_Cast2 5y agoI had Black 3.0, sold it to get musou black. Black 3.0 was no darker than the inside of my macro tubes, and not too black IMHO Musou black is way darker, and does make a difference when using it as a coating.
- sprior 5y agoWhen 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.44313296508 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.
- dalmo3 5y agoAll I see is a white egg and a blue egg. Jokes aside, it must feel surreal to see it in person, a "photoshopped out" piece of reality of you will.
- faebi 5y agoWhy are the dashboards of cars not painted in this or similar colors? I want to have minimum reflections but the temperature is probably the problem.
- nitrogen 5y agoPolarized sunglasses will significantly reduce the visibility of dashboard reflections.
- simpsond 5y agoYes, but if you have a HUD which projects on the windshield, you can no longer see it. Unless you tilt your head. This is a minor annoyance.
- stan_rogers 5y agoNo, 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.)
- echelon 5y ago* THIS MAY BE CARCINOGENIC * 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.
- shazeubaa 5y agoHeh, this feature: • Smells like fresh coffee
- dcow 5y agoIf 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]
- AKSucks 5y agoThe 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.
- asah 5y agoI used Black 2.0 and Black 3.0 and kinda prefer 2.0 for most things - easier to use. My favorite project was making a weird edge disappear in the apartment. Notice how the edge and white draw the eye away and create visual noise: https://photos.app.goo.gl/UydkPpEZJUL3jtaF9 https://photos.app.goo.gl/UydkPpEZJUL3jtaF9 When I applied a regular black on the top and 3.0 in the edge, it blends in with the dark window framing, even during the day: https://photos.app.goo.gl/gqjco8jWN5gsKTWf6 https://photos.app.goo.gl/gqjco8jWN5gsKTWf6