Sara Nathan
Keith “Bang Bang” McCurdy is best known for tattooing the A-list – from Rihanna and Cara Delevingne to Justin Bieber and LeBron James.
But he is now embarking on a quest to turn tattoos into medical diagnostic devices, using “Magic Ink” — a tattooing ink which can be turned on or off by being exposed to light.
The 38-year-old has joined forces with Dr. Carson Bruns, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado, the inventor of the ink.
The duo believe that Magic Ink will eventually be used to warn people with diabetes about their blood sugar, or to alert people to slap on sunscreen.
This week, McCurdy launched the “disappearing” ink with some of the world’s top tattoo artists.
He has already tattooed his pal David Blaine (the magician, of course, is no stranger to disappearing acts), and of course has inked himself with it — at least 50 times.
The “ink” is actually particles of dye, encased in medical grade PMMA — the same polymethyl methacrylate material found in dermal fillers used to plump lips.
Once injected into the skin, the particles become visible by being exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light, stay visible and are then “switched off” — or deactivated — by a regular flashlight, including one from a phone, being run over the tattoo.
It can then be switched back on by being exposed to UV light.
McCurdy showed The Post one of his Magic Ink tattoos. Lifting up his pant leg and flashing a UV stylus light on the skin below his knee, the word “SAD” in red suddenly appeared.
Then he ran the flashlight over it and it disappeared – like nothing had ever been there.
Famed for inking the lion on Delevingne’s index finger and the intricate etchings on Rihanna’s hands, McCurdy runs the hippest tattoo shop in NYC, and counts Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez among other clients.
But a few years ago he partnered with Bruns.
“I started researching who’s working on futuristic tattooing — what does the tattoo of the future look like?” he said.
“Because tattoo inks are quite simple, they’re really just pigment particles in a carrier fluid.
“They grind those up really small, they put them in a liquid, and we stick them in your skin. They stay there. Your body over time digests them, that’s why your tattoos will blur.”
As soon as he started his research, McCurdy found Bruns, who had developed a new ink.
“This ink would tell him if he was in UV (ultra violet) light from the sun because humans can’t see UV, but it’s harmful in heavy doses,” said McCurdy.
“It’s responsible for 90% of the aging of our skin from the sun. So Carson wanted to give people the ability to know if it’s time to put on sunblock.
“It was pretty amazing, but it was just a dot. And it gave me a different idea — could we engineer that formula to be something tattoo artists are familiar with… and also give clients new abilities with their tattoos.”
McCurdy and Bruns now run a company together called Hyprskn, working with a team with doctorates in chemical engineering, biochemistry, chemistry and nanotechnology, “you name it,” McCurdy said.
The first uses of Magic Ink are creative, he said. “Your tattoo doesn’t have to be so permanent anymore and it works in a couple ways; you could get a standard tattoo that you’re familiar with or you could get a patch of ink and you could change that picture inside your skin.
“Honestly, we’re still in the beginning of figuring out creatively how we could make this work with standard tattoo inks and what could your tattoo you have already do? How could it animate? What could change about it?”
But the next step he and the company are working on is medical diagnostic uses for the ink.
“We want to bridge the gap between biology and technology,” he said. “I think skin is the perfect interface for the things that we use daily and it’s the perfect interface for things that can help people throughout their life.”
Bruns and his colleagues have made a series of potentially game-changing inks, KFF Health News reported in August.
One changes color when exposed to gamma radiation which could one day be used as a safety device in the nuclear and other industries.
Bruns’ formula was originally intended to alert the user that it’s time to apply sunscreen. They have since reformulated the ink to give the user complete control of their tattoo.
The long-term goal is to use tattoos to alert people to medical information, particularly blood sugar warnings for people with diabetes, by being able to change them not with exposure to a flashlight, but a signal connected to medical information — a development which still eludes researchers.
Ali Yetisen, an engineer at Imperial College London, told KFF that although no-one has figured it out quite yet, “the money” lies in technology embedded in the skin, with diabetes a big focus, as they aim to alert users to changes in their biochemistry.
McCurdy agreed: “The holy grail is something like chemical changes in your body. Think of diabetics, blood sugar, if your tattoo could change color based on the glucose level in your body.
“We’ve been working on it for so long and we’re still figuring out like, ‘Wow. What could I do?’ Which is such an inspiring feeling, because I’ve tattooed for 20 years, there’s nothing that surprises me about tattooing. And now, there’s this thing that I’m like, ‘I’m still learning all the possibilities’. It’s infinite, right?”
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings