Redemption Of Vanity

 MIT engineers  have cooked up a material that is 10 times blacker than anything that has previously been reported. 

The material is made from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes, or CNTs — microscopic filaments of carbon, like a fuzzy forest of tiny trees, that the team grew on a surface of chlorine-etched aluminum foil.

 The foil captures at least 99.995 percent* of any incoming light, making it the blackest material on record.

The researchers have published their findings today in the journal ACS-Applied Materials and Interfaces. 

The artwork, conceived by Diemut Strebe, an artist-in-residence at the MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology, in collaboration with Brian Wardle, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, and his group, and MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology artist-in-residence Diemut Strebe, features a 16.78-carat natural yellow diamond from LJ West Diamonds, estimated to be worth $2 million, which the team coated with the new, ultrablack CNT material. The effect is arresting: The gem, normally brilliantly faceted, appears as a flat, black void.

“The Redemption of Vanity” presents a 16.78 carat naturaI yellow diamond (Fancy Vivid Yellow SI1, Radiant shape, value $ 2.000.000,-) the most brilliant material on earth covered with carbon nanotubes, the most light absorptive material (the blackest black on earth), which makes the diamond appear to disappear.

The literal devaluation of a 2 Million Dollar diamond can be seen as a challenge to the art market and a statement on the arts by means of an aesthetic asceticism.

The Redemption of Vanity is an Artwork on the Intersection of Art and Science Presented at The New York Stock Exchange on 13th September 2019.

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