WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 1 00:00:00.140 --> 00:00:02.600 You're not seeing this pink. Not properly. 2 00:00:02.600 --> 00:00:04.419 This camera can't capture it, 3 00:00:04.419 --> 00:00:05.640 YouTube can't store it, 4 00:00:05.640 --> 00:00:07.759 and your screen can't display it. 5 00:00:07.759 --> 00:00:10.160 I'm in the studio of artist Stuart Semple, 6 00:00:10.160 --> 00:00:14.320 and he's made what he calls the Pinkest Pink. 7 00:00:14.320 --> 00:00:16.849 I've been painting since I was five years old, 8 00:00:16.849 --> 00:00:19.050 and I've seen a lot of pink. 9 00:00:19.050 --> 00:00:21.820 And thousands and thousands of people have used the pink, 10 00:00:21.820 --> 00:00:24.680 and nobody's said they've seen a pinker pink. 11 00:00:24.689 --> 00:00:26.039 This stuff's really pink. 12 00:00:26.039 --> 00:00:29.599 I've created the pinkest pink, the greenest green, 13 00:00:29.599 --> 00:00:32.380 the loveliest blue, and the yellowest yellow. 14 00:00:32.380 --> 00:00:35.890 I've also created the world's most glittery natural glitter 15 00:00:35.890 --> 00:00:40.129 and the mattest blackest art material in the world. 16 00:00:40.129 --> 00:00:44.399 About a year and a half ago, a company called Surrey Nanosystems 17 00:00:44.399 --> 00:00:46.980 announced that they'd created Vantablack, 18 00:00:46.980 --> 00:00:51.170 which was this really awesome blacker-than-the-blackest-black black 19 00:00:51.170 --> 00:00:54.720 but they gave the exclusive rights to an artist called Anish Kapoor to use it, 20 00:00:54.720 --> 00:00:56.769 and that annoyed a lot of artists, 21 00:00:56.769 --> 00:00:58.480 and I got really annoyed as well. 22 00:00:58.480 --> 00:01:00.690 So I put my Pinkest Pink out. 23 00:01:00.690 --> 00:01:02.879 On the web site I put a disclaimer 24 00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:05.780 that you weren't Anish Kapoor, you weren't associated with Anish Kapoor. 25 00:01:05.780 --> 00:01:08.320 A lot of people thought that was quite funny 26 00:01:08.329 --> 00:01:10.770 and a lot of people bought the pink 27 00:01:10.770 --> 00:01:14.670 unfortunately including Anish Kapoor, who managed to get his hands on it 28 00:01:14.670 --> 00:01:16.290 and then he dipped his finger in it 29 00:01:16.290 --> 00:01:19.250 and put it on Instagram that he'd got the pink. 30 00:01:19.250 --> 00:01:22.310 It was sort of great and sort of really frustrating when he did that, 31 00:01:22.310 --> 00:01:25.240 because all of a sudden we were getting thousands and thousands of orders 32 00:01:25.240 --> 00:01:29.270 we ended up staying up for about four weeks making pink paint 33 00:01:29.270 --> 00:01:30.399 and nothing else could happen 34 00:01:30.399 --> 00:01:32.260 and it just took over our whole life. 35 00:01:32.260 --> 00:01:36.390 There are all sorts of complicated and clever ways that computers can store colour, 36 00:01:36.390 --> 00:01:38.560 but by the time this video reaches your screen 37 00:01:38.560 --> 00:01:42.040 it's basically just a series of numbers that say how bright 38 00:01:42.040 --> 00:01:44.829 to make each of the red, green and blue pixels, 39 00:01:44.829 --> 00:01:47.880 the tiny lights that make up your screen. 40 00:01:47.880 --> 00:01:50.840 And unless you've got a really fancy, expensive screen, 41 00:01:50.840 --> 00:01:55.909 those numbers run from 0 to 255 -- which is eight 1s in binary. 42 00:01:55.909 --> 00:02:01.039 0 means turn the pixel off, 255 means as bright as it can go. 43 00:02:01.039 --> 00:02:05.950 That means your screen can show somewhere around 16 million colours. 44 00:02:05.950 --> 00:02:07.229 But that's not every colour. 45 00:02:07.229 --> 00:02:08.869 And it's not this one. 46 00:02:08.869 --> 00:02:12.340 Because if I pointed this camera at the sun, you wouldn't be blinded. 47 00:02:12.340 --> 00:02:17.430 The numbers can't go above 255, I can't make your screen go brighter than 100%. 48 00:02:17.430 --> 00:02:22.800 And if I point it at something extremely dark, the number can't go below 0. 49 00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:26.560 I can't make your screen any darker than if it was turned off. 50 00:02:26.560 --> 00:02:29.430 In the same way, there are colours that are so intense 51 00:02:29.430 --> 00:02:33.501 your screen can't display them, the pixels cannot go red, green or blue enough. 52 00:02:33.501 --> 00:02:35.459 And this is one of them. 53 00:02:35.459 --> 00:02:38.180 There are massive libraries of pigments, 54 00:02:38.180 --> 00:02:42.800 organic ones, inorganic ones, synthetic ones, created ones, natural ones, 55 00:02:42.800 --> 00:02:45.379 and they've been digging them up since day dot. 56 00:02:45.379 --> 00:02:47.989 'Mummy brown' was made out of ground-up mummies. 57 00:02:47.989 --> 00:02:52.160 So there's a huge database of pigments that you can order. 58 00:02:52.160 --> 00:02:53.450 And you can play with them. 59 00:02:53.450 --> 00:02:55.800 I've made mixes of these pigments and binders, 60 00:02:55.800 --> 00:03:00.239 created something, tweaked it, and gone back and got these relationships right. 61 00:03:00.240 --> 00:03:03.100 So it's quite a complicated little potion, actually. 62 00:03:03.100 --> 00:03:05.900 In a few years' time, technology will move on. 63 00:03:05.909 --> 00:03:09.879 It's already possible to buy expensive equipment with a wider colour gamut, 64 00:03:09.879 --> 00:03:12.310 and that might be able to display this pink. 65 00:03:12.310 --> 00:03:16.940 But in the meantime, I can try and simulate what being here is like. 66 00:03:16.940 --> 00:03:21.269 In this shot, this one here, I've digitally adjusted the saturation of this pink 67 00:03:21.269 --> 00:03:23.380 so it's not quite as intense. 68 00:03:23.380 --> 00:03:25.300 Now if I turn it back up... 69 00:03:26.600 --> 00:03:29.620 Imagine that change, but more so. 70 00:03:29.620 --> 00:03:31.129 That's how pink this pink is. 71 00:03:31.129 --> 00:03:33.420 It is ridiculously pink. 72 00:03:34.340 --> 00:03:36.320 Thank you to Stuart Semple and all the team at his workshop: 73 00:03:36.320 --> 00:03:40.940 pull down the description for more about them, their pigments, and this pink. 74 00:03:41.880 --> 00:03:43.120 This is gorgeous! 75 00:03:43.129 --> 00:03:46.519 I cannot get over how luminous this is. 76 00:03:46.519 --> 00:03:49.739 I started out, like, "well, this isn't doing anything, this is just powder" 77 00:03:49.739 --> 00:03:51.629 and then it just goes!