Art
The artist Lidia Sigle is collaborating with the Department of Sustainable and Bio-Inspired Materials, where she experiments with biosourced substances interacting with light. Inspired by photonic architectures that some plants evolved, Sigle is working with cellulose to create iridescent structural colour.
Structural colours are produced by periodic nanoscale structures that interfere with light. They generate the most intense colours known in nature. Unlike pigments which absorb light, structural colours do not fade. Iridescence is the phenomenon of certain surfaces appearing to change colour as the angle of view or the angle of illumination changes. Constructive and destructive interference results in different colours appearing at different angles. At certain angles the waves add, giving a strong reflection of just one wavelength—a pure colour.
Commissioned by the European Patent Office to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the European Patent Convention, Sigle’s structural colour painting 5629055 is constantly changing between an infinite number of ephemeral states. The shifting colour planes are created by the self-assembly of cellulose nanocrystals, introducing the aspect of chance.
