[imagesource: Heathcliff O’Malley / Telegraph]

No need to shield your eyes, like a mole flushed from the undergrowth.

Ever heard of Pure Structural Colour? Nope, me neither, but it’s an emerging technology that is blending art and science to produce the “boldest, brightest colour on Earth”.

CNN reports that Pure Structural Colour is produced from nanostructures, which are “tiny particles that reflect and scatter light to replicate the brightest hues found in nature”:

It was developed by Lifescaped, a lab and studio founded by the scientist and artist Andrew Parker.

This month, artworks incorporating the technology have gone on public display for the first time at “Naturally Brilliant Colour,” an exhibition at the UK’s Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London.

Image: Roger Wooldridge/Royal Botanic Gardens Kew

Parker says his fascination with colours begun in the 1990s, when he was studying marine organisms in Australia.

When he looked at coral reef creatures using a microscope, for example, he found the colours to be much brighter than pigments.

Under electron microscopes, it was possible to see the minute structures that interacted with light to produce those colours.

The vivid hues of living creatures are often structural; they are produced by microscopic cell structures that can interact with light to create dazzling optic effects. Typically, artists rely on intricate combinations of pigments to portray the world around them, but using Pure Structural Colour may make it easier to reproducing a variety of color wavelengths, Parker said…

Image: Lifescaped

One of the ways that Lifescaped has developed Pure Structural Colour is in the form of tiny transparent flakes. These can be mixed with a biodegradable polymer and paint formulations to produce various visual effects, such as intensely bright colors, iridescent colors that seem to change when viewed at different angles, and colors that seamlessly blends into one another.

Aside from the aesthetically pleasing aspects, there’s also the fact that the environmental implications of this technology could be game-changing, reducing our reliance on toxic polluting paints, as well as potentially reducing carbon emissions.

Right, that’s enough.

You can read CNN’s full report here, and find more information on the ‘Naturally Brilliant Colour’ exhibition here.