Digital #MediaArt(s) Numérique(s)

Copying a song, movie or image without the creator's permission is illegal in many instances, especially so if the infringement is intentional. But what if that piracy is done on a nanoscopic scale, so that infringed works are imperceptible to human senses? How does that affect the artists?

Art is a fickle thing: when it happens, it takes place on multiple levels. Even when it doesn't, it's still every bit as invisible. And art that you can't even see with the naked eye? Don't even get me started—I'd rather let a nano-artist do the talking:

Frederik de Wilde is a creator working at the microscopic vanguard between science and art, an area he describes as “the post sublime.” His work with carbon nanotubes (CNT's) has yielded a color known as “blacker-than-black,” an all-absorbing, nano particle-based lab creation that has simultaneously rendered our prior understanding of the color spectrum insufficient and opened massive avenues of exploration in art, science, and everywhere in between. Featured everywhere from TED to the Belgian Art Museum, the fruits of his labor, provide the sort of shakeup at the intersection between chemistry, physics, and artistry that could change, well, everything.

The collaboration between me and a group of PhD students working at the Polytechnic of Turin, coordinated by Prof. Fabrizio Pirri, Chilab team leader, specialized in micro and nanotechnologies - begins in 2006.

In those 9 years the group realize a series of micro and nanometric artworks representing so far, at national and international level, the exceeding of a limit, of a boundary, of a necessity: that of an art visible to the naked eye. Nanoart plays on the aesthetic paradox of exposing ideas, concepts and artworks  that cannot be seen, nevertheless being not inexistent or unreal.

The success of this radical form of artistic expression is testified not just by the various national and international exhibits (among all, the Biennale of Contempory art of Sevilla in 2008 and Principia Exhibition in Piazza del Duomo, Milan, 2011), but also by the the numberless conferences in Italy, Europe and Canada held by the members of the group (Academy of Sciences and Polytechnic of Turin, Viewfest in Turin, 2009, 2010 and 2013 editions of Technarte conference in Bilbao, University of Barcelona in 2010, Institute of Culture, Toronto, in 2009 among the most relevant events). The crowning of this exploit is represented by an article published on Nature Magazine in September 2007 and the publication of Nanoarte official catalogue edited by Skira, realized during the first Nanoart exhibit in Bergamo, 2007.
 

Earlier this year, a small British tech company called Surrey NanoSystems announced that they had developed the "world's darkest ever material" called Vantablack, a super-black substance akin to looking into a black hole. As speculation grew about how the material could be used creatively, sculptor Anish Kapoor announced his intentions to start working with it. 

However, Belgian artist Frederik De Wilde claims that he was actually the first to pioneer a super-black material using carbon nanotubes – and that his material is actually even darker than Vantablack. His legal team contacted us regarding our coverage of Surrey NanoSystems' invention, alleging that De Wilde had been working on a similar material for the past decade and has been collaborating with NASA for the last two years. ...