And since then, people have created even darker black pigments. So the man is left holding someone people will never want.
He made a competing black that anyone can buy, too.
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?
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?
Don’t forget that he paid for and directed a music video specifically to make fun of Kapoor. It’s called “Bean Boy.”
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.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
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.
Has his operation gotten any more reliable? I thought about getting some of the powders to put in resin but there were so many stories of people waiting months and then getting ghosted.
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?
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.
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.
Carbon nanotubes are real? I thought that shit was invented for upgrades and repairs in No Man’s Sky…
Carbon nanotubes, son!
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.
Honey Lemons facial expression makes her look like a horror movie character in this frame lol
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.
I will never remember his name. He will always be The Bean Guy to me.
Flick it.
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🥵
