Thursday, April 25, 2019
How Gesaffelstein’s Coachella set tricked minds with the world’s blackest black
The Verge: One of the most visually impressive performances at this year’s Coachella was special, not just because of what the audience could see, but because of what they couldn’t see. Behind Gesaffelstein, the French record producer and DJ, was a monolith covered entirely in Vantablack, a very scarce, very expensive, and quite fragile material made by Surrey NanoSystems in the UK. It’s the world’s blackest black, erasing any visible features on a 3D surface and making objects very disorienting for the brain.
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I have been wondering what kind of applications we would be able to find for this new material and this one is certainly interesting. I am glad that it has found its way into our world. I think it is a crazy new color that could change so much of what we do. I wonder how good of a show this was using it so heavily though. I feel like it did not really lend itself to the other design aspects of it, but maybe that was the point, or maybe its restrictions made it more of a challenge and therefore more of an over all powerful show. It looks like the performer largely disappeared in front of it too, which does not really seem to be a great result. I guess that could have been the goal though. I know it is really expensive, but I wonder if we will ever use this backstage to hide things. I feel like if the budget was there, people would really jump for it to cover up things that we want to disappear. I would like to see it in person one day.
I wish that we had been given a better look at the set itself. The video that we are shown isn't very impressive. I will say that I wonder if this was a good use of money. Vantablack is so expensive, and having a painter on the tour with them and all this specialize handling equipment probably makes it significantly more expensive. I don't know if a wall that is literally built to be invisible and dark is really something you want during a concert. Concerts are about light and media and spectacle, and I don't know if a wall of black really does anything pas the initial novelty. From the photos it looks like all the walls really managed to do was create a good backdrop for photos, rather than do something new and cool to watch and see. The vantablack novelty is cool, but creating a huge monolith and touring rig around it seems anticlimactic and boring.
I have been waiting for Vantablack to be used in a theatrical setting ever since I saw it first come on the scene. That being said the video they showed and the other images I found of the set online were rather disappointing. I honestly couldn't make out much of a difference if any from any other black material. I was also disappointed with application that they used it for as I'm sure in concert it may have been an interesting lighting effect as the extreme contrast but that being said in the video you can't really tell any advantage. From a design element it seems rather strange too as it such an expensive and illustrious material and then they used it in such a basic way that I'm not sure if it was really effective in supporting anything more then people's view of the dj on stage when the lights came up.
Okay, echoing what everyone else has said, I think Vantablack is super cool, and I can definitely see it having a place in entertainment, but I frankly didn’t find this application very impressive, and like Lenora, I question if it was worth the money. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and say that it was probably a lot cooler and more effective as a mind trick in person, but it feels like one of those things that just “sounded like a really cool idea,” and they had the money, so why not? It just didn’t feel like the spectacle that we have come to expect from Coachella, and the inclusion of this “cool new sciency material” made me expect that spectacle even more, and it just wasn’t there for me, at least on video. Sidenote on the design itself, I don’t really understand the white fabric (?) flanking the Vantablack. It feels like an afterthought visually, like they couldn’t afford enough Vantablack to do the entire stage (which I could have been really cool) so they just threw a cyc up, which is an ineffective choice in my opinion.
I feel like this design is a good start but is not nearly as successful as the producers of Gesaffelstein’s act think it was. Yes, there were moments where the effect of pure and endless darkness really wowed and my mind was convinced that is what it was seeing even through video. However, for the most part, I feel that it was just lost and kind of wasted. The moments that the vantablack was most powerful was when it was bright enough to see that it truly was absorbing light. When it was bright on either side of the monolith, the contrast showed the true mind warping effect that the coating has. I would be curious to see how this set would have been if it was not performed on after sundown. Would how would the presence of light change the effect? I believe, given some of the bright moments in the video, that it would only enhance the vantablack and give the Prince of Darkness a true void to emerge from. I wonder, would full sun or dusk be better? Perhaps a full light would start to detract from the effect, who knows? I’d be really interested to see this in person someday.
Having followed the rise of Vantablack and other revolutionary new pigments lately, I’ve always asked myself where such technology could actually be applied. This makes total sense to me-- artists, especially those with more experimental styles/sounds, are always looking to create a unique visual impact for a live performance. While the entire process of the labor that went into creating this venue makes less sense to me, I can definitely see and admire the design choice that went into the Vantablack stage. I think what’s also so effective about this is the costume design that went with it. Having the metallic and shiny finishes of the garments contrast with the deafening Vantablack backdrop creates a very unusual visual experience that the audience-- both sober and not-- will find disorienting but engaging. I wish I were there to experience the real thing (or any large scale use of Vantablack, for that matter) in person!
I would love to see this stuff in person. I have been very amused by the Kapoor controversy, or at least by his opponents, and I am familiar with Ad Reinhardt’s work that predates all this by a number of decades. In my work, I have encountered a material called Super Quality Velvet, which is an incredibly black fabric that, when used on stage among other black surfaces, looks like a eerie black hole. Super Quality Velvet, though, is a fabric with a knapp, and it can be lit so that it is visible. I wonder how quickly Vantablack degrades as it absorbs light, and I am also curious to find out how it is affected by all the haze used in Gesaffelstein’s show. I would be willing to bet that applying it is a similar process to powdercoating, but I still find it a bit curious that they need specially trained technicians to apply it.
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