Making beauty from soot: Graviky Labs transforms air pollution into artist’s ink

With its innovation, Graviky Labs turns air pollution into ink—facilitating artistic expression while making an important statement about the environment.

Anirudh Sharma was raised in Mumbai, India—a city with high levels of air pollution, where many suffer from lung disease and cancer.

This issue was on his mind in 2013—while he was studying at the MIT Media Lab—when he invented KAALINK, a patent pending retrofit technology that connects to vehicles and chimneys, and captures air pollution using static electricity.

KAALINK is made with heat and water-proof electronics and materials, and captures up to 95 per cent of the particular matter pollution. The device doesn’t affect the vehicle’s engine performance.

After collection, KAALINK is emptied, and the residue is sent to Graviky Labs to get turned into AIR-INK. During the process, heavy metals and carcinogens are removed, making the end-product a purified carbon-based pigment. 45 minutes worth of vehicular emissions can produce one fluid ounce of AIR-INK.

AIR-INK marker pens come in a variety of shapes and sizes: 0.7mm round tip, 2mm round tip, 15mm chisel tip, and 50mm wide tip.

So far, Graviky Labs has cleaned 1.6 trillion litres of air.