When Stuart Semple read the news of a “new color”, he knew it was his duty as a chroma-obsessed artist to cook up a paint inspired by it. And so, after a long night in his “lab,” he concocted a liquid paint that attempts to embody the unprecedented coloration of so-called olo.
Olo is the name given to a newly described color experience that scientists at the University of California, Berkeley recently evoked by using specialized lasers to stimulate individual cells in the retinas of five people, expanding their perception of color beyond what the human eye typically experiences.
There’s a bit of debate about whether it can be considered a “new color”, but it’s evident the technique creates a visual experience that’s unfamiliar to anything we see in everyday reality. The human guinea pigs in the study described the color as intensely saturated greenish-blue, a bit like a fluorescently glowing teal.
Stuart Semple, artist and colorful provocateur, poses with a sample of his new paint YOLO.
Image courtesy of Stuart Semple
To recreate a similar experience, Semple mixed pigments and chucked in a strong dose of fluorescent optical brighteners, which absorb ultraviolet light and re-emit it as visible blue light, making materials appear brighter. These chemical compounds are added to laundry detergents as a trick to make your clothes appear more vibrant. They are also found in purple shampoos, which help keep gray, white, and blonde hair looking bright and beaming by offsetting any dull, yellowish discoloration and darkening.
He’s called the paint “YOLO.” While it isn’t an exactly the same as olo in the recent study – that would require some very fancy lab equipment to replicate – Semple argues his paint is the closest you’ll get to experiencing it in reality.
It’s likely that the computer screen you’re looking at isn’t fully capturing the true quality of YOLO, as the paint’s unique visual effect depends on the way light interacts with it in person. According to Semple, it’s best seen with your own eyes, in the flesh.
A peachy human behind painted with YOLO.
Image courtesy of Stuart Semple
Semple is the brains behind the world’s blackest black paint, as well as the pinkest pink. In one of his most famous skits, he confronted the British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor who bought exclusive rights to use Vantablack – once known as the world’s blackest black – in 2016.
Made from tightly packed carbon nanotubes that trap 99.965 percent of light, Vantablack creates an almost complete visual void, making surfaces appear flat and featureless. In response to Kapoor’s controversial move, Semple created a pigment he claimed was even darker. It was available for anyone to buy – except Kapoor, who was explicitly banned from using it. If you want to buy it, you have to declare you’re not Kapoor, associated with him, or purchasing it on his behalf.
His latest project has a similarly irreverent tilt. Bottles of YOLO are available to buy for £10,000 (around $13,300) – unless you are an artist, in which case it’s just £29.99 ($39.92). Would-be buyers must promise the paint will be used for “artistic applications only” and ensure it will not end up in the hands of a non-artist (or, god forbid, a scientist).
Source Link: Artist Creates A Paint Inspired By The "New Color" Olo, Called YOLO
