A PR make-over of the colour black….
I enjoy a quiet delight on living in a technicolour world, where each named colour has innumerable variations that bestow depth and feeling to our perspective. This is not something I regularly consider, but Spring light has a way of elbowing your attention to the palette around us and I am reminded that sunlight, the wardrobe choreographer, reveals colour differently across the world. Where the brilliance of a red is startlingly divergent when posed in hot and cold climates.
Colours can induce conflicting emotions in each of us as they resonate with associations, echoes of the impact of history and the weight of social customs. Across many cultures we even link good and evil with particular colours — typically black and white. But slightly off kilter, I discovered a debate as to whether black (and for that matter white) is a colour. That surprised me. The definition of colour according to the Oxford English Dictionary is ‘the property possessed by an object of producing different sensations on the eye as a result of the way it reflects or emits light’, which as we’ll see below means black is not a colour. However others would argue that colour is a result of what we perceive. So as we perceive black, it must be a colour….Can you imagine how heated these debates must be??!!
I’ve decided for this post to focus on black as it seems to invite controversy from many angles. To keep it simple I refer to black as a colour forthwith.
Through a physics lens, black is an absence of colour as it absorbs all light around it. We have defined Pure black as what exists when there is absolutely no light in attendance. This would only occur in a black hole because on Earth, however minimal, light is always present. Fascinatingly recent research has demonstrated that even in space there are unexplained sources of light which means black is never as dark as we have theoretically computed it to be. We have employed chemistry to create various shades of black used in many different applications, but to date we have not been able to create a complete absence of colour; a complete absorption of light. However, in recent years, human ingenuity has delivered the capability to re-organise atomic structures. This has allowed us to create a greater range of black that take us closer to Pure black. In the process this has turned colour into technology.
You may ask how is improving on colour useful to industry? In the case of black, such developments have been very useful in aerospace and optics where an improved black reduces glare (by absorbing more light). This is beneficial to astronomic telescopes studying the stars as it allows more accurate readings. This greater absorption also enables solar panels to operate with higher efficiency. Darker blacks also help with electrical conductivity on certain metals and can (though I don’t understand how) help equipment to withstand tougher terrains.
In 2013, Surrey Nanosystems created a black technology for use in aerospace and optics originally called Nanotube black. It is formed of a dense coating of ’nanotubes’ which trap and absorb light from all the wavelengths (99.96% of all light it was claimed) — as opposed to reflecting it — so that as you consider it, there are no visible bumps or ridges; barely any light reaches the human eye. It appears as if you are looking at a void; a nothing. It is a depth of blackness we are not used to.
As the production process to make their black became easier, this technology was turned into a paint colour and Nanotube black was re-named Vantablack.
This advancement has an interesting side story. In 2016, Anish Kapoor, a British artist (he of the famous shiny art installations) negotiated a contract with Surrey Nanosystems that entitled him to exclusive rights to Vantablack. And my, this resulted in quite a cat fight amongst the artist community as Kapoor enforced the exclusivity; refusing to allow anyone else access to the blackest black. Annoyed at this, a fellow artist, Stuart Semple, took it upon himself to create black 3.0 which absorbs more light than Vantablack, so suggesting that it was even blacker than Vantablack. Semple sent samples of black 3.0 to other artists and on a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for manufacture he made this clear:
Important: By backing this project you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not backing this 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 its way into the hands of Anish Kapoor.
Yes — a proper artist bicker.
As an aside, Semple then created the ‘Pinkest pink’ which is the most beautiful vibrant colour. And although he banned Kapoor from using it, a few weeks after release, Kapoor released a photo picturing his finger dipping into a tub of it. Semple has also created other beautiful sounding colours. Diamond dust — the most glittery glitter, Black 2.0 — a cherry scented alternative to Vantablack and two unicorn colours one of which changes colour with temperature so needs to be kept in the fridge and periodically shaken.
So — back to black (ha — did you see how I did that?) In 2019, MIT engineers reported that they had been able to produce (by accident) a black that was 10 times darker than Vantablack measured using optical reflectance. But they explained that although this is incredibly black — they didn’t fully understand why this black was more void like than for example Vantablack. Surprisingly (to an armchair scientist like me), despite this gap in knowledge, the MIT engineers seem very sanguine about their discovery, believing that other blacks can be created that will be even ‘blacker’.
Throughout history to the modern day, the colour black has been imbued with dark and evil significance as well as associated with solemnity and grief. ‘Witchcraft, the underworld, night-time and the far side of the moon’ is what people ponder when the colour black is mentioned stated an article in the Economist last year. In Latin, black is translated as ‘Ater’. Atrocious and atrocity are also derived from this Latin stem and in the Western world we perpetuate this negativity with such expressions as — black Monday, black hearted, black plague, black mood, blackmail. In the movies, how often do you see a criminal not wearing black? I could go on.
As we move away from the depths of sinister, black is analogous with sophistication and power. Whether that is good or evil depends on your moral stance. By now you’ll know my opinion. Coco Channel, Steve Jobs, the little black dress — are all connected to this colour.
Then there is the salt of the earth associations. For example, in ancient Egyptian times, black was linked with the fertility of the soil around the river Nile. Black was the first colour used in pre-history (more than 17,000 years ago) to draw and later used by writers and printers as their primary colour. The first book ever printed (The Gutenberg Bible) was printed with black type on white paper and in the 14th Century, as black clothes dye improved, the Italian wealthy dressed in it to signify their status.
If you were to ask around I think you’d find that black is probably the most conflicted of colours. It is often maligned and rare is someone telling you it is their favourite colour other than in clothing. But it’s gone too far. I say It’s time for black to get sassy, have a PR make-over and regain a place of affection and awe in our hearts. Black is an important part of this technicolour world we live in and even if scientifically it is not a colour, it has the power to evoke feeling as much as any other. And for that it deserves to be enjoyed too.
