Blue sky inking: turning city smog into works of art
AIR pollution in London is not going away. By last month it had already exceeded the annual limit for 2017. But one project has found a way to turn the blur of particulates into art.
Air-Ink is a range of water-resistant markers and screen print paint, all made from air pollution by a company called Graviky Labs. So today’s polluted skies could be tomorrow’s wall murals, history books and designer clothing.
“How could we turn something so ugly into something so useful?” asks the project’s Kickstarter page. Unburned carbon soot from chimneys, generators and cars is captured by Kaalink, a device that fits neatly over the end of an exhaust pipe, filtered, then converted into inks and paints. By using just 30ml of Air-Ink, you’re essentially writing off 45 minutes worth of pollution.
Alchemy, of course, has a bad reputation. The bubbling cauldrons, arcane arts and transmutation of base metals into gold never really took off but the 21st century has seen scientists achieve greater success. Designer Anna Bullus’s gum-drop bin has been taking chewed-up globs and turning them into rubber to be used for anything from toys to boots since 2010, while companies such as London entrepreneur Arthur Kay’s Bio-bean recycle waste coffee grounds and turn them into biofuels.
There’s an art to skimming about off the gunk from our vehicles and turning it into something practical. In Asia, where pollution in city spaces far outstrips London’s, artist
Kristopher Ho has been using Air-ink to beautify public spaces in Hong Kong, stencilling flowing black beasts upon the city walls, while monochrome shoes, motorcycle helmets and sketchbooks stencilled by the Canadian artist Anteism in Air-ink are available with Kickstarter donations.
The team, based at an Indian offshoot of MIT and backed by the beer giant Tiger, fitted the Kaalink devices to trucks, generators and ferries across Asia and, over a period of months, captured billions of particles that would otherwise be in the air or lungs. As London’s air has yet to clean up its act, this is a pollution solution to get behind.