Who owns colour?

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2021

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Scientists, artists and some of the world’s biggest companies are carving up the visual spectrum, and claiming certain colours as their own, so who does have a right to use the colours of the rainbow? We explore the ongoing rift over the worlds “blackest black” Vantablack, which was created by engineering firm Surrey Nanosystems, and can only be used by the artist Anish Kapoor. Contemporary British artist Stuart Semple argues that creativity should not be limited by commercial agreements, while Surrey Nanosystems executive Ben Jensen explains that the material is not suitable for general use. Author Kassia St Clair explores the meaning and history of colour, and we hear how interpretations of colour have changed from Julie Irish, an assistant professor specialising in colour, at the College of Design in Iowa. Note: Surrey NanoSystems has clarified their material Vantablack isn’t toxic, as described by one speaker in this programme, but can be an irritant.(Picture of a colour splash via Getty Images).

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Vivienne Nunes and today on Business Daily, the colour wars.
0:05.6	We'll hear how scientists, artists and some of the world's biggest companies
0:09.7	are carving up the visual spectrum and claiming certain colours as their own.
0:14.9	Do we have a right to all the colours of the rainbow?
0:17.8	Or is colour a commodity like everything else?
0:20.6	To be told that you can't have access to a colour or a material or a process
0:23.6	because you're not clever enough, rich enough, exclusive enough or powerful enough,
0:27.0	is really the wrong message.
0:28.3	Ask about generosity.
0:29.6	It's a scientific material for space.
0:32.3	You can't paint with it.
0:33.2	It's not a paint.
0:33.9	It's an actual structure that you grow.
0:36.8	But no one seemed to hear that bit of it.
0:39.0	They only heard, well, you can't use it, and they got extremely upset by it.
0:43.3	Business Daily from the BBC.
0:51.1	I love colour. I'm passionate about colour. It's like the fuel of my life. I first fell in love with colour when I was about eight years old and my mum took me to the National Gallery and I saw Vangov sunflowers for the first time and it literally blew my mind and since then I've been obsessed with finding the most saturated, brightest, most potent colours.
1:14.7	Contemporary British artist Stuart Semple there.
1:17.9	Color is all around us, so much so we often take it for granted.
1:21.8	But as Stuart shows, colour induces a strong emotional response
1:25.9	and can be an effective shorthand to convey
1:28.6	meanings such as danger or environmentally friendly.
	...

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