Artsy: If you google “Quantum Blue,” the top results, as of this writing, will all pertain to a 341-foot-long megayacht of that name owned by Russian billionaire Sergey Galitskiy. But that may soon change. In late August, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in northern California, working with artist Olga Alexopoulou and color researcher Maria Chatzidakis, made strides towards developing a new, high-tech pigment dubbed “Quantum Blue.”
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This is pretty fascinating. I’ve never really thought of color as a science or a commodity. Color just kind of exists in the world; it is there, it was there, and it will be there. I guess the way I think about color is more about the color itself and less about the pigment. Naturally occurring colors on the light spectrum still need to be found in tangible form in order to use them in art and fashion and so on. It’s insane to think about finding more. Color has always fascinated me, you can’t describe it truly without using itself and you can’t think of a new color because your brain only has the repertoire of what it has seen to pull from. How do these scientists who actively work to find new color pigments do it? How do they know what to strive for when it’s something you cannot really conceive? I’m sure if I were more knowledgeable about this scientific field it would feel far less enigmatic, but that’s one of the things that makes it so cool.
The Article “A Look at the Newest Blue Pigment” by, Benjamin Sutton, opened by eye to “how a color becomes a commodity” and the amazing things that can happen when artist and scientists collaborate. Outside of just Quantum Blue, Color mixing has always been a combination of science and art. Creating color comes down to knowledge of chemicals and how they react to each other. This article builds off of that and talks about claiming ownership of the color. This, before reading the article, would not have made sense to me, but when you put in to mind the process of creating color, and specially Quantum Blue, it makes sense that “it may be neccessary to disclose the process by which it is made to any manufacturers or advertiser who need to recreate the color,” and “to patent it before those disclosures occur”. Overall the main outoput I gained from this article, was solidifing the idea of the amazing things that come from collaboration (Look at theatre). As Alexopoulou said, “that the collaborative and secentralized process was on of the projects greatest strengths…[they] had different perspectives, and everyone was discovering new things from each other”.
As cool as this is...how much would it cost? The article says it's a complicated process, which is why the creators want to patent it before releasing the formula, which means it's most likely pretty expensive. Who could afford it, and for what application? Film and television, possibly, but they already use so much CGI, it hardly seems worthwhile (and there's nothing in the article to indicate that it would look like much on camera). Perhaps my imagination and paint experience are limited, but I'm not sure how useful as a tool in theatre outside of special effects in costumes and props. Don't get me wrong, I think it's very cool that someone is making paint with quantum particles, but its value may be limited to paintings and the like.
How cool is this? It’s amazing that we (humans) have the ability to create a new pigment. Clearly, we aren’t done creating and reimagining life. Also, how cool is it that so much time, money, work, resources, and care is being put into the arts? Yes, it’s still in collaboration with science, but it seems that Quantum Blue is a purely aesthetic product. We live in a world that values sports, business, and STEM over fine arts, so to see that people care so much about making a color reminds me that there is a use for our profession in the 21st century. One thing I wonder is if we will see Quantum Blue in our products. It seems like an expensive and labor/skill intense process and is also dependent on an external factor. Much like other “glow in the dark” products, it needs a black light to power it. This is a considerable factor in manufacturing and design. They mention using it on watches and jewelry. However, these are very small pieces and a blacklight could add extra bulk and unwanted weight. Anyway, I’m excited to see what the inventors do with this new technology and I hope to see it in my next electronic purchase,
Back when I used to do a lot more ceramics and sculpture, I started mixing my own glaze colors. Making ceramic glazes is really just chemistry. There are various chemicals that you need to combine so that when heated they form a surface texture, gloss, and color that you want to achieve. As this article discusses, a large number (I would argue probably the majority of pigments) are scientifically developed, even if it isn’t a scientist who is doing the developing. I would be curious to see if this pigment makes its way into scenic painting in the future. If it is affordable enough I imagine it must, and given the way light effects it, it could create interesting lighting opportunities. When I first saw this title of this article, it definitely reminded me of Vantablack, but unlike Vantablack, Quantum Blue seems a lot more practical for artistic (and potentially theatrical) applications.
I found this article so interesting. I think it is so fascinating that people continue to create new pigments. As many colors as there are in the world right now, there could be 100 times that in like 30 years. I love that this color was created by using these quantum dots that have other scientific and technological, and yet the scientists used this to make a pigment that can be used for art and they did it with the help of an artist. I love seeing examples of how the worlds of science and art are coming together and it seems to be happening more and more frequently now which I love. I found it so interesting that the pigment industry is a 30 billion dollar industry. Of course that number makes sense to me now after reading that article, but honestly, before reading it, it did not occur to me that pigments would be patented and people would make money when a specific color was used.
You don’t hear about new colors all that often, so this really peaked my interest. As a painter myself, it’s fascinating and inspiring to think about not only an altogether new color, but a new kind of paint. I’ve always strongly believed in the connection between science and art but it never crossed my mind that it could be applied to something like this.
What made me most excited however, was the simple fact that the art of painting is still developing and finding ways to stay relevant in a new science and technology driven culture, and not only that, but it’s adapting and incorporating these new technologies in ways I never could have predicted.
Many artists are incorporating projection, creating digital art, working in VR and things along those lines, but to take something as primal and arcane as painting and innovate is wildly creative and exciting. I’m curious to see if this is something that scientists can develop into pure pigment or if it inherently needs light in order to be viewed, and if so, how that will be incorporated into future paintings visually and conceptually.
While the color that the article calls Ultra Blue is in itself a very fascinating one as the article states it does have the strong limitation of requiring that it be viewed with the usage of UV light with I think will limit exactly how useful of a pigment it can be be in the theatrical world not impossible to use but hard. That said the technology that is be used to create it is very interesting to mean because this is the second new high tech color that is playing with science on the microscopic level to minipulate how the human eye experiences a color the second one that constantly come to mind is that of Venta Black and it forest of micro fibers to capture light this making it the blackest Black. With the usage we are getting to a really cool place where technology is capable of producing products that can baffle the mind and that just damn cool.
The science and commodification behind Quantum Blue reminds me of the discussion surrounding Vantablack. The patented chemical substance named the darkest artificial pigment in existence has been applied to fields ranging from fine art to commercial production. When Vantablack was first introduced in around 2014, I was totally captivated by the idea of using science to create colors we’ve never seen before. Not only that, but this special pigment can be trademarked, packaged, and sold in different forms. To some extent, Vantablack’s position in this world made sense to me; an intense, light-cancelling, totally flat black sounds both widely useful and aesthetically appealing. The fact that Quantum Blue is an intense blue pigment that's relatively finnicky nature makes it much more interesting when considering the breadth of its potential future uses. I do hope, however, that Quantum Blue and similar science-born rare pigments maintain their niche quality and novelty in their applications.
I love collaborations between art and science that create things like this. I remember the vanta black articles and a few others of a similar vein, and I think it is awesome when pigments have scientific backgrounds and other applications. I think this colour in particular could definitely be useful in a few of the contexts the mentioned, like watches, and I would be really excited to see if in fact this colour is put into industrial applications as well due to its unique brightness. I do think that it's uses are limited due to the need to put it under ultraviolet light, but I still see many applications even given the caveat. I also really like how people are still looking to create new and different pigments, despite the fact that such a wide range exists today. I look forward to more pigments and colours being created through partnership between design and science.
I love hearing about new colours. This is an amazing example of how endless the possibilities for new discoveries are. People often think of colours as a reviewed thing, however the fascination with the color blue across the world leads to continual discoveries. I saw an amazing exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum that was titled “Infinite Blue”, which explored the colour from many different perspectives. Blue objects, as well as poems about blue from one of my favourite books “Bluets” were presented. I’ve always had a fascination with this colour, and as I’ve gotten older I always find more and more interesting things about it. People often see it as a tranquil colour, one to help you sleep. In reality, blue keeps you awake, which is partially why so many social media platforms such as facebook, twitter, tumblr and others use the colour so prominently. The book Bluets explores the author, Maggie Nelson’s adoration with the colour Blue. It is bizarre that this colour throughout cultures appears so often, for as this article stated, it is one of the hardest colours for the human eye to perceive. I am extremely excited for the production of this new UV colour for blue, and would love to see it in person. The possibilities with Blue are continuous.
I thought this article was a very interesting look at the modern interaction between science and art in terms of color! I love hearing about scientific advances with applications in artistic fields and think it’s interesting that even now we are discovering new ways to make pigment, something that’s been used for millennia. The economic side of it is interesting as well. Companies could “license” specific processes and colors to specific artists who would be willing to pay, which brings up a discussion of the ethics of potentially limiting art in such a way. The article reminded me of the controversy regarding Vantablack, a pigment produced several years ago that uses carbon nanotubes to absorb more light than any other man-made substance in such a way that an object painted with it will simply look like a photoshopped hole in space regardless of how much light is shined on it. The artistic potential was of course immediately noticed, but the company producing it made the choice to license its use only to Anish Kapoor, best known for the sculpture commonly referred to as “The Bean” in downtown Chicago. Many artists protested this limitation, arguing that by making the paint impossible to experiment with, its potential is limited. Another artist, Stuart Semple, struck back at Kapoor by creating his own line of paints, with names such as “Pinkest Pink”, “Yellowest Yellow”, “Black 2.0”, and so on, with many of the same properties as Vantablack but with more ability to be used in artistic applications, and licensed their use to every person on earth except Anish Kapoor. I think these two examples demonstrate the complexities of situations involving new technology and how it relates to art, especially in terms of merchandising. I personally believe that for artists to keep pushing boundaries, everyone should have the same access to the same materials, and that the collaboration that comes from that can make art better as a result.
The ways which we find to trick our eyes into seeing different wavelengths of light and the ways that our eyes trick our brains into interpereting those different wavelengths into color never cease to amaze me. I read once that in much of the world, before blue pigments such as turquoise, indigo and lapis lazuli were found and traded, people didn't have words for the color "blue." It just didn't enter into their lives to have a word to describe that color, even though the sky was still blue, and they still had blue flowers. My experience with colors is interesting, as I have slowly been gaining a respect for the work that designers, painters and costume craftspeople have to put in to manage and control color in all their works. This realization came was very strong during the color matching assignment for beth's paints class, which was surprisingly difficult, but also surprisingly fun! It is great to see innovation with colors has not stopped, what with vantablack and "the world's pinkest pink" and now, Quantum Blue!
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