Venture Singularity: To Boldr Go Where No Other Watch Brand Has Gone Before

It can be extremely beautiful, both figuratively and literally, when watch companies draw inspiration from unlikely sources for their creations. And where traditional, established watch brands have layers of corporate policy to get through before any one idea is approved, microbrands have the freedom to dream. To illustrate my point, is the creation of Boldr’s recent Venture Singularity.

Instead of just slapping on a piece of Aventurine glass and calling it a space watch, Boldr went further. This company based in Singapore instead looked to the centre of our galaxy – the Milky Way – and made a watch inspired by the black hole found there, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*).

To be more specific, the watch was designed based on the image produced by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration based on the radio activity surrounding Sgr A*. In reality, a black hole cannot actually be seen as the strong gravitational forces doesn’t allow any light to escape, hence why it is a black hole. And considering that this black hole at the galactic centre of the Milky Way is 26,000 light-years away, it would be near impossible to see it with any optical telescope anyway.

Therefore, to obtain this image, the EHT project relied on data from a combination of very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) stations around Earth essentially creating a planet-sized telescope. If you want a more detailed version of this explanation, there is an interesting documentary out on Netflix that follows the process of how this collaboration created the image of Sgr A*.

To recreate the seen and unseen elements of Sgr A* on the Venture Singularity, the designers at Boldr went with an ultra-minimalist approach. The watch is totally black with only the outer parts of the hour, minute and seconds hands glowing in bright orange. And to be as faithful as possible to the concept of a black hole, the dial is finished in ultra-dark Musou black paint which absorbs 99.4 percent of visible light. Just as a comparison, the world’s darkest material Vantablack absorbs 99.965 percent of light but due to its complex production methods, it would have been too costly to use on a microbrand watch.

The Venture Singularity is created with solid titanium, both for the case and the bracelet, which have also been coated black. The crystal is sapphire with a Perma-AR coating. The watch is powered by an automatic movement and is water resistant up to 200m.

As of now, the first batch of the watch has been sold out, but you can still pre-order the Boldr Venture Singularity at MYR2,112 from their website with delivery scheduled from January 2023.