http://blog.wired.com/blacklighttats/index...x.album?i=0&s=0

This article reminds of shadowrun culture for alot of reasons. But most of all because the invention of nano-paste trodes that says club goers usually apply the stuff artistically over there heads. One of the first things i thought of when i read that was getting the nano-paste tattoo'ed into your head.

Woooooooo...

in SR this would be based on subdermal display tech that allow you to change the designs, and turn then on and off at will.

Nanites.

Sweet!

I'm surprised this is news. They aren't always so invisible without blacklight. Some of them show raised and slightly discolored skin, iirc. Minor though.

true, very minor compared to a normal tattoo.
the raised skin would be scaring, no?
the article talk about that going away after a year or two.

Yeah the raised skin is scaring. My brother is a tattoo artist and has done UV ink on friends and family. I havent gotten any because picking a tattoo is for life basically. If done right you wont see anything. You may see slight discoloring of the skin, mostly again from scaring. And yes minor scaring will eventually go away. Horrible jailhouse type tattoos are a different story. If the UV ink is just tattooed in like most of those pictures you wont notice the tattoo. But you can mix the UV ink with colored inks and in the UV light youll get a distorted brighter color of that ink. Like basic red becomes a purplish pink glow. Its funny watching him tattooing with straight UV ink. Sitting in the dark except the black light. It looks like a bad sex scene on CSI. Lights on blood all over, lights off looks like the person is covered in other human fluids.

EDIT: A lot of tattoo artists dont mess with UV ink. One story is when the ink was first introduced it was thought to be carcinogenic so it was pulled off the market. A couple parlors claimed to have natural UV ink formulas that werent and charged much much more. Some dont do it because its a pain to ink with, like I described above. The UV ink itself is also about 3 times the cost of standard ink. I think I bought him an 8 ounce bottle for $75 (US).

In my opinion, UV inked tattoos are a bad idea for running the shadows...

With UV googles in teh corporate secuirty book, yeah I would say so also. But then again any tattoo on any exsposed flesh during a run is a bad idea. MCT loves gases and chemicals just for instance. With option the way they are in SR a tattoo might as well say, Hi, my name is Bob, Im a shadowrunner, I live at 123 baker street.

But think how much fun they'd be at Dante's or a similar night spot...

Hmm. Could the UV tattoos be made in an interference pattern to act as camoflage vs said UV goggles?

Much like you can fool many folks using IR goggles with a black-and-green random pattern camoflage?


-karma

Only if you were standing in a field of purple glowing UV objects and buck ass naked I would suspect. The green pixelated pattern you see in low light goggles is because thats how the lens make every thing look. Im not sure how the UV googles make the world look, Im not sure they even exsist. I would also consider gettign UV paint and painting my camoflague clothes with it before I tattooed my entire body UV camo pattern. Call me silly but I like my ink to have menaings and reasons, hiding in a corporate compound isnt really one of my top prioreties.