I read "LSD guru Timothy Leary claimed to have discovered an extra primary color he referred to as "gendale." on the web site and I wondered what gendale looks like. Does any one know? It is probably hard to describe. Thanks!

I'm afraid this might be more confusing than it is helpful...but like LSK said, it's awfully hard to get to display anything close on a computer screen -- or even really in person as well -- but this is the picture that someone used to explain it to me. You really have to stare at it for a while, and then it will "pop" in to place. Kinda like one of those magic eye things, except you don't have to cross your eyes.

Definitely the second one makes more sense. I wonder if any animals see gendale naturally, whereas humans do not. Like cats see infrared, frinstance.

I believe that I read somewhere that koalas can see both infrared and ultraviolet, so it's reasonable to assume that they might see gendale as well. Evidently the way their optic nerves are "wired" allows them to see further along the spectrum than any other mammal.

Posted By: ploppityplop

in the second picture, gendale looks like a combo of green and red, so wouldn't that make it a secondary color instead?

No, it cannot be placed on a computer spectrum, therefore, it really isn't being displayed.

so, is there any news on how he discovered this new color? and also how is it used in making other colors? (i.e., what colors are made from it?)

I'm pretty sure this had something to do with the discovery.

So, he really didn't discover gendale, but rather believed that he discovered a new color?

has anyone got the "magic eye" thing to show the color to work? it took a while for me, but it was pretty cool when i saw it.

You have to give it some time. The first time, it took me about 2 1/2 hours before it finally kicked in. I don't know how to describe it other than to say that it really is unlike any other color I've ever seen. It gets easier each time I try it, though. When I did it yesterday, it only took an hour. I found it works better by holding my fingers apart and waving them in front of my eyes while I look at it.

I don't know if it's working for me...I see it blend together as one colour, but it's not really "popping".

Oh yeah, and I'm 13 years old and live on a farm. I wouldn't even know where to find LSD, and I don't think I'd have the money either

*makes a face that looks like this -.- , except a lot less ASCIIish*

Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'm 100% against kids taking LSD for the sole purpose of seeing new primary colors.

Posted By: MrFingers

you should wait until your brain has developed almost entirely before you try it.

OHH

I thought you meant don't try the Magic Eye thing until I had a fully developed brain.
'Cause I'm normally really good at Magic Eye. I don't ever want to try drugs, but unfortunately, times are changing. I wouldn't mind seeing a new shade of black though.

Wow, that is really cool. I mean, I 'knew' what gendale was, but I had never been able to see it before. That's so awesome. I showed this to my friend, and he couldn't see it. Who are the gendalers among us?

WHOA THAT'S REALLY COOL

I don't see anything.

when the disk spins fast and the black and white halfs are creating a hexagonal cycle, I can see a colour on the inner lines, but when I then stop and close my eyes, i see nothing at all. not even a blue halo.

tried again, no halo. but im seeing vivid colours on the middle lines of the top. I'm pretty sure its gendale, or atleast what my mind thinks gendale should look like. it is a colour completely absent of blue, and it is a mixture of green, a little bit of red, and yellow. it's quite a brilliant colour, and unusual since a mix of green and red normally isn't so bright and crisp.

that thing is intense.

when you go over the first screen refresh rate the colours turn into darkish blue on the inside and white on the outside.

I also found it easier if you set your monitor refresh rate as high as you can; it seems to take longer if it's set to 60 Hz.

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: MrFingers</cite>when the disk spins fast and the black and white halfs are creating a hexagonal cycle, I can see a colour on the inner lines, but when I then stop and close my eyes, i see nothing at all. not even a blue halo.</blockquote>
Yea... I got the same thing. So instead of looking at the Benham disk, I've been studying the first image that Legatissimo posted. I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but when I study the image for a long time, the white circle disappears and I see this colour... it's kind of a cross between green and orange... but it kind of isn't either. I'm not quite sure how to explain it, but then again, colour is nearly impossible to explain. It's a very bright and very brilliant colour, though.

I'm genetically incapable. Dammit. I guess I should be happy about my good health.

I dunno...that page looks like crap.

Even that gendale magic eye gave us some insight. The closest RGB equivalent of "Squant" is grey, or more accurately, #666666?

Here's a rather strange collection of quotes I found on the "Story of Squant" page.

"Story of Squant"

In the gray register, squant appears to look very much like a light cerulean blue or a perhaps a mid-range oxide green but, of course, it isn't.

"Story of Squant"

However, in a most interesting sidelight, pure squant has also proven to be the only color, primary or otherwise, to carry its own unique scent with it.

This is just outrageous. A colour with scent? That just makes no sense.

"Story of Squant"

Thanks to a personal friend of mine, Rolin Wandbagon, a professional snapshot expert who travels the world looking for saleable imagery...

This is particularly odd. Forgive me if this is a common name, but Rolin Wandbagon? Rollin' Bandwagon if you haven't already figured it out. Maybe just a pseudonym for a famous photographer, perhaps?

And another particularly fishy observation.

"Story of Squant"

As a last-ditch effort, I called up a friend of mine, Chris Dugan of goddamn.com, and asked him for advice. He said that he'd recently bought an Apple Quicktake 1500sq, and would lend it to me.

After clicking the link, goddamn.com is a porn site _{I should've known.} Maybe just he has a squant capable camera?

Well, I don't want to download the plugin. The site seems murky enough without squant. It's probably just some gag where it somehow changes the HTML for body bg colour. And the colour of the grey for the photography.

The photography page shows a bunch of images with squant including a car, a chinese parade dragon, a beach ball, and they all have that grey colour. It's curious, indeed. But I don't want to get into it. Figuring out gendale is hard enough for me

In conclusion, this seems to me a site that is just a stunt like World Jump Day but less serious and going to be a lot less sucessful. I mean, scent? Links to porn? And another huge part is that www.negativland.com is a band's website. For such a huge discovery, it's not even getting it's own domain name? They're spending too much time talking about the moral objections of having Dr. Squant being allowed to name a colour after herself than they are about the science of squant. Where's the science?!

In conclusion 2, this is a gyp.

Posted By: Geog

"Story of Squant"

However, in a most interesting sidelight, pure squant has also proven to be the only color, primary or otherwise, to carry its own unique scent with it.

This is just outrageous. A colour with scent? That just makes no sense.

Actually, it makes considerably more sense than you might think.

The portions of our brains that deal with the perception and processing of various sensory data are fairly closely situated and even more closely related neurologically. In a somewhat ineffable condition called "synesthesia", which is experienced by perhaps 1 in 23 people, input between the senses is inexorably crossed or jumbled. This causes, for instance, certain letters to be associated with certain colors or be perceived to have a distinct personality, certain words to have a particular flavor or taste, certain musical tones to have a particular color, or certain colors to have a particular scent.

It's very difficult to accurately imagine, and perhaps more difficult to evocatively describe, but imagine if every time you saw, say, the letter "S" is was red, or at least had a kind of red halo or glow... Every letter or number has a color, and that color is always the same. They may be grouped in a way that has come to seem logical to you, or they may be totally random.

As Professor Patricia Lynn Duffy put it, "One day," I said to my father, "I realized that to make an 'R' all I had to do was first write a 'P' and then draw a line down from its loop. And I was so surprised that I could turn a yellow letter into an orange letter just by adding a line."

Or, imagine that you knew the letter "R", and knew that he was a intolerable, overbearing, overly self-confident fellow, and that you were reminded of this every time you saw the letter "R", so that seeing an "R" was a bit like being in this unpleasant person's company... You know the personalities of all the letters and numbers by now, and those personalities make some words more pleasant or unpleasant than others.

Or, imagine that when you heard a C sharp note, a pale, ghostly blue kind of strobed and undulated through your field of vision, tinting everything you see. B flat might be bright green... A natural, banana yellow.

Imagine that if you said, heard, or even thought the word "spaniel", for instance, you had the sensation of sour grape juice on your tongue. The sound "uh..." that people make when they're trying to think of the next word might taste like rotten egg, making you have very little patience for people who speak inarticulately.

Imagine having to ask what color a hotel room was, what colors the curtains and bedspread and carpet was, before you make reservations, because certain shades of brown smell like dead fishbut some really obnoxious greens smell like fresh rain, and some blues smell like a puppy... Imagine you can never wear the tie your girlfriend gave you because it's a rich red, and that color red smells like a cat box.

That's synesthesia.

Now... While synesthetic experience can be brought on by drugs or by specific brain or sensory injuries, keep in mind that this condition occurs in something like 4.34 percent of people with "normal, noninjured, nondiseased brains."

Now... Consider for just a moment... What if those people are the more evolved ones. What if there -are- further connections and connotations to be found in the world we sense around us, if only we could perceive them...? What if some sounds or colors or smells or words have more powerful connections, thus making it "easier" for a "normal" person to perceive them? If someone had the sonar sense of a dolphin or a bat, and we had no real way of testing it, we'd think that person was completely wacked out.

- "No, really...! I can tell exactlly how far away something is, and how quickly and in which direction it's moving, relative to myself, because I can feel it when my voice bounces back off of it..."
- "Dude... Step -away- from the crack pipe..."

Who knows...?

Wow, that makes a lot of sense, Devil's Advocate.

So you're saying that "Squant" may have even more powerful synesthetic connections with people? A connection so powerful that even a normal person can expericence synesthesia?