Color Tech

Do you know the difference between Blood Red, Brick Red, Candy Apple Red, Fire Engine Red, Orange Red, Rose Red, Ruby Red, and Tuscan Red? You can thank modern chemistry for that, because before 1800, there was only one Red.*

Color as we know it came from the Industrial Revolution, and by extension the chemical revolution at the tail end of it. Keep in mind that petroleum, the blood of the gods that infused the Industrial Revolution, is made of huge and complex chemicals that can be broken down into thousands of other chemicals. This provided the raw materials for an explosion in color technology.

(Most colors, as well as fragrances, were discovered by accident while scientists tried to find ever-inventive ways to exploit the waste products of coal use.)

At the same time, and for the same petro-logical reasons, the West began its descent into today's disposable culture. Plastics, paints, glazes and dyes began coating every object we came in contact with. The consumer culture was swiftly educated by color-coded crayons, lipstick and home telephones.

A mature, discriminating populace now takes for granted that the rainbow can be divided and subdivided ad infinitum and projected onto any object imaginable. But our technicolor world has downstream problems; it's poisoning local waterways and ecosystems.

This is where biomimetic color comes in. Twenty years ago, biomimetic color was mostly limited to imitating the structural color of peacock tails or butterfly wings. Today, biomimetic color means genetically engineering bacteria to make the colors for us.

For example, researchers might look for genetic codes that produce color, like the blue in a Blue Jay, then Frankenstein those genes into the bacteria, feed it some garbage, and forget about it.

There's even a company doing structural color by making bacteria that change their dimensions or their positions. This would make them be able to change colors depending on their microscale surface textures, and in real-time (i.e., an lcd video, i.e., the screens of the future will be literally alive).

The point here is that we're trying to make things that aren't reliant on petroleum or even petroleum waste products, and bioengineering allows us to still use someone else's waste stream, since the raw materials are now basically E. coli and carbohydrates.

E. coli is a standard choice of organism in these Frankensteining endeavors. So basically E. coli will be to the biotech revolution what the steam engine was to the industrial revolution?

*As a veteran art teacher, I can say that at one point I could differentiate and name, by sight, every pencil in Prismacolor's 150-color pencil set; I could tell their "yellow-orange" from their "orange-yellow" and the 20% French Grey from the 30% French Grey.

Post Script:
Totally unrelated to E. coli machines, this is a nanonscale metal-etching laser that makes the surface a "selective absorber" of light, which means you can make it absorb and reflect any color of the spectrum you want; this is a kind of structural color similar to iridiscent insect skin etc.

Review of The Color Revolution by Regina Lee Blaszcyzk, 2012
https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-color-revolution.html

The first color we learn to see is Red:
Cultural Evolution of Basic Color Terms
Network Address, 2012
https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2012/07/cultural-evolution-of-basic-color-terms.html

Green is one of the last colors we "evolved" to see;
And Japan thanks Crayola for being able to now see the color Green:
Seeing Red
Network Address, 2013
https://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2013/06/seeing-red.html

Plasmonic pixels could be used to make non-fading paint
Jun 2016, phys.org
http://phys.org/news/2016-05-plasmonic-pixels-non-fading.html

Color-changing materials could be used to detect structural failure in energy-related equipment
July 2016, phys.org
http://phys.org/news/2016-07-color-changing-materials-failure-energy-related-equipment.html

Partially Unrelated Post Script:
Yarn created from skin cells can be woven into human textiles
Feb 2020, phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-yarn-skin-cells-woven-human.html

Heal and replace damaged body parts and organs using a fabric that is grown using human skin-producing cells.

Notes:
Lasers etch a 'perfect' solar energy absorber
Feb 2020, phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-lasers-etch-solar-energy-absorber.html

Making beautiful colours without toxic chemicals
Feb 2020, BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51007426

Here's a few companies working in the new world of color:
San Francisco biotech firm Tinctorium, France's Pili and UK-based Colorifix, University of Cambridge and Dutch biotechnology company Hoekmine

Butterfly-inspired nanotech makes natural-looking pictures on digital screens
June 2020, phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-butterfly-inspired-nanotech-natural-looking-pictures-digital.html


Also first demonstration of black/grey colors in structural color display