BMW Unveils Car Painted In ‘World’s Blackest Black’ That Looks 2D
Image via BMW
Was that a shadow that just zipped past?
BMW has unveiled a variation of its BMW X6 in “the world’s blackest black,” which traps over 99-percent of light and is almost wholly reflection-free.
The automaker collaborated with Surrey NanoSystems, inventors of the Vantablack pigment, and creative agency Levitation 29 to introduce the voidless shade on the car.
Artist Anish Kapoor owns exclusive rights to the original Vantablack, but the vehicle features a variation called ‘Vantablack VBx2’ that enables it to be sprayed onto larger mediums. The BMW VBX6, with “VB” being short for Vantablack, is the “first and only vehicle in the world” to be covered in the variant.
As Vantablack absorbs over 99-percent of light, the human eye perceives the pigment as two-dimensional. The super-black BMW VBX6’s three-dimensional qualities, such as its twin headlights and kidney grille, thus seem to disappear.
Ben Jensen, inventor of Vantablack, explains that the collaborators settled on the ‘VBx2’ variant because it still brings a one-percent total hemispherical reflectance, giving the car a very minimal sheen at every angle.
“We realized that it wouldn't have worked if we’d put on the original Vantablack material, as the viewer would have lost all sense of three-dimensionality,” says Jensen in a press release.
The BMW X6 was chosen as the vessel of the pigment due to its distinctive silhouette.
“Putting a paint like that on a conventional car lacking a distinctive design would probably detract from it in some way,” he adds.
While the Vantablack pigment is exclusively, and notoriously, owned by Anish Kapoor, an “open source” version is commercially available courtesy of artist Stuart Semple, who was indignant that all other creatives were denied of the right to use the shade.
Image via BMW
Image via BMW
Image via BMW
Image via BMW
[via Dezeen, images via BMW]
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