From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

This is cool. It uses cone bleaching and after images to create a
color in your eyes you've never seen.

Not SF, but this is the nearest thing to The
Color Out of Space I've ever encountered.


https://youtu.be/Q6jyq_RY8i8
Showing you a color yourCOve never seen before.
Channel: A Brush with Bekah

The whole channel is worth browsing. She makes
paints using classical recipes, and explains
their history. Want to see actual Uranium
Yellow, Arsenic Green, Vermilion, ultramarine,
and Royal Purple?


pt
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

Cryptoengineer <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:

Not SF, but this is the nearest thing to The
Color Out of Space I've ever encountered.

Back in 2025, some UC Berkeley folks managed to make this color called
"olo." It's basically a shade no one's ever seen before because it
sits outside what we can normally perceive.

They pulled it off using this thing called "Oz," which kind of hacks
your vision by lighting up just the M-cones on their own - that nev-
er happens with normal light.

The people who saw it said it looked like a super intense blue-green,
but you had to mix in some white light before it lined up with any
normal color. That proved it's actually beyond our built-in color
range.


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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

Cryptoengineer wrote:

This is cool. It uses cone bleaching and after images to create a
color in your eyes you've never seen.

Not SF, but this is the nearest thing to The
Color Out of Space I've ever encountered.

https://youtu.be/Q6jyq_RY8i8
Showing you a color yourCOve never seen before.
Channel: A Brush with Bekah

The whole channel is worth browsing. She makes
paints using classical recipes, and explains
their history. Want to see actual Uranium
Yellow, Arsenic Green, Vermilion, ultramarine,
and Royal Purple?

It is indeed incredible how innovative technology prods ongoing ocular optimization.

# # #

"Maxfield Parrish - The Highest-Paid American Dreamer" [1] created some
of my favorite 20th century art:

<https://www.artrenewal.org/secureimages/artwork/314/314/2695/arizona-large.jpg>
<https://www.artrenewal.org/secureimages/artwork/314/314/14320/winter_night_landscape_%5Bstudy%5D-large.jpg>

One of my friends is an artist. She also appreciates the work of
Parrish. "A shade of cobalt blue has been named Parrish blue after this
iconic artist." [ibid.]

# # #

ART APPRECIATION by di filippo repost:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Don
Subject: Beware the Hieronymus Bosch

"Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true!"

"Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life."

"To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,"

Suppose God delivers the afterlife you crave. For instance, if you don't believe in an afterlife, then your afterlife is nihility itself. You get nonexistence because you want it.
An afterlife qualifies as posthuman on a most personal level. All of
which brings us to _babylon sisters and other posthumans_ (di filippo).
Or, more specifically, to a short story in the di filippo collection
called "a short course in art appreciation."
In the story, a peptidergic pill induces a physiological, perceptual
change in users. They experience a different "perceptiverse" based upon
the pill ingested. A Dali pill delivers a Dali environment. A Vermeer
pill provides a Vermeer perceptiverse, and so on. As art aficionado
Alena enthuses:

"By taking this new neurotropin we'll be enabled to see not
/like/ Rembrandt, but as if /inhabiting/ Rembrandt's canvases!"

There's a hitch, of course. A hitch to provide story tension.

Note: This thread's title is not a spoiler. Bosch isn't in the story. ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note.

[1] Parrish enjoyed a long career and tremendous economic success. For
example, he became the highest-paid commercial artist in the United
States by the 1920s. He was well-known for his illustrative works
of fantastical subjects, as well as his idealized neo-classical
imagery. The striking compositions are distinctive due to their
bold tones and saturated hues that result in an ethereal, whimsical
effect. Parrish admitted that his true passion lay in rendering
landscapes and he incorporated elements of landscape art in many
of his works. A shade of cobalt blue has been named Parrish blue
after this iconic artist.

<https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/maxfield-parrish/>

--
Don.......My cat's )\._.,--....,'``. veritas _|_ telltale tall tail /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,. liberabit |
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.' vos |

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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

On 2/18/2026 11:07 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:

Cryptoengineer <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:

Not SF, but this is the nearest thing to The
Color Out of Space I've ever encountered.

Back in 2025, some UC Berkeley folks managed to make this color called
"olo." It's basically a shade no one's ever seen before because it
sits outside what we can normally perceive.

They pulled it off using this thing called "Oz," which kind of hacks
your vision by lighting up just the M-cones on their own - that nev-
er happens with normal light.

The people who saw it said it looked like a super intense blue-green,
but you had to mix in some white light before it lined up with any
normal color. That proved it's actually beyond our built-in color
range.

'Olo' is discussed specifically in the video. Olo was generated by
using microlasers to stimulate one particular set of cones in the
retina.

This video attempts to do something similar by having you stare
at a (more or less) red screen for a minute to bleach out the
other two cone types, then switching to teal. This means that
the M-cones (the ones the laser stimulated) are way more active
then the other exhausted ones, and for a second or two you see
an approximation of olo.

Its pretty neat.


pt
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

On 2/17/26 9:54 PM, Cryptoengineer wrote:

This is cool. It uses cone bleaching and after images to create a
color in your eyes you've never seen.

Not SF, but this is the nearest thing to The
Color Out of Space I've ever encountered.

https://youtu.be/Q6jyq_RY8i8
Showing you a color yourCOve never seen before.
Channel: A Brush with Bekah

Interesting - thanks.

The whole channel is worth browsing. She makes
paints using classical recipes, and explains
their history. Want to see actual Uranium
Yellow, Arsenic Green, Vermilion, ultramarine,
and Royal Purple?

In this newsgroup, in this thread, somebody should mention "octarine".

So I am.
- Tony

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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

On 18/02/2026 15:54, Cryptoengineer wrote:

This is cool. It uses cone bleaching and after images to create a
color in your eyes you've never seen.

Not SF, but this is the nearest thing to The
Color Out of Space I've ever encountered.

https://youtu.be/Q6jyq_RY8i8
Showing you a color yourCOve never seen before.

I learnt a lot of stuff, much of which I was surprised to have
forgotten. Brilliant introduction but after the warning to prepare eye
drops, I stopped watching. I understood exactly what she was saying
because she was so good at explaining such complications, so did not
feel the need to experience it, at the expense of later inconvenience.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

On Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:10:16 -0500, Tony Nance wrote:

In this newsgroup, in this thread, somebody should mention "octarine".

So I am.

Also, it might be relevant to mention that there are women who walk among
us who see a whole different and vaster universe of color than everyone
else. That's because the genes for the pigments in the cones of the eye
are on the X chromosome, so a woman one of whose parents is an anomalous trichromat (a kind of color blindness) could have the three normal cone pigments plus the anomalous pigment in a fourth kind of cone.

John Savard
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

On Sun, 22 Feb 2026 03:31:03 -0000 (UTC), quadi wrote:

Also, it might be relevant to mention that there are women who walk
among us who see a whole different and vaster universe of color than
everyone else. That's because the genes for the pigments in the
cones of the eye are on the X chromosome, so a woman one of whose
parents is an anomalous trichromat (a kind of color blindness) could
have the three normal cone pigments plus the anomalous pigment in a
fourth kind of cone.

I have heard about such. One such tetrachromat woman had a successful
career as an interior decorator. Apparently her talent was in
distinguishing extra shades of ... beige.

Conversely, I have heard of cases of colour-blindness being cured by
the wearing of specially-designed glasses. I suspect the sufferers
were not true dichromats, it was just their misfortune to have colour
receptors with peak sensitivities too close together in the spectrum.
So I think the special glasses were basically filters to magnify the
difference in stimulation between those different receptors.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

On Sun, 22 Feb 2026 03:57:09 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D|Oliveiro
<ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 22 Feb 2026 03:31:03 -0000 (UTC), quadi wrote:

Also, it might be relevant to mention that there are women who walk
among us who see a whole different and vaster universe of color than
everyone else. That's because the genes for the pigments in the
cones of the eye are on the X chromosome, so a woman one of whose
parents is an anomalous trichromat (a kind of color blindness) could
have the three normal cone pigments plus the anomalous pigment in a
fourth kind of cone.

I have heard about such. One such tetrachromat woman had a successful
career as an interior decorator. Apparently her talent was in
distinguishing extra shades of ... beige.

IIRC, steel mills once employed men who could see the /exact/ color at
which the steel should be poured. Most could not see that many shades.
Their sons often had the same talent.
Modern steel mills no doubt use some form of equipment to detect when
the proper temperature is reached.

Conversely, I have heard of cases of colour-blindness being cured by
the wearing of specially-designed glasses. I suspect the sufferers
were not true dichromats, it was just their misfortune to have colour >receptors with peak sensitivities too close together in the spectrum.
So I think the special glasses were basically filters to magnify the >difference in stimulation between those different receptors.

--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

On 18/02/2026 02:54, Cryptoengineer wrote:

This is cool. It uses cone bleaching and after images to create a
color in your eyes you've never seen.

Not SF, but this is the nearest thing to The
Color Out of Space I've ever encountered.

https://youtu.be/Q6jyq_RY8i8
Showing you a color yourCOve never seen before.
Channel: A Brush with Bekah

The whole channel is worth browsing. She makes
paints using classical recipes, and explains
their history. Want to see actual Uranium
Yellow, Arsenic Green, Vermilion, ultramarine,
and Royal Purple?

Now what's that short story, possibly on Mars,
where it's determined that a sense which the
aliens have and humans don't, can be given by
stimulating a certain part of the brain -
to appreciate an alien performed art form -
but the stimulation is destructive.

Obviously, a human undergoes the process,
appreciates the art form, and then regrets
that they now can never experience it again.

I don't think it's "A Nose For Ecclesiastes".
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:

Now what's that short story, possibly on Mars,
where it's determined that a sense which the
aliens have and humans don't, can be given by
stimulating a certain part of the brain -
to appreciate an alien performed art form -
but the stimulation is destructive.

Obviously, a human undergoes the process,
appreciates the art form, and then regrets
that they now can never experience it again.

"The Secret Sense" (1941-03) by Isaac Asimov (1920/1992).

I know it because IIRC it was mentioned in "alt.usage.english",
maybe even several times. So, I deem it to be a rather famous story.

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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

On 2/22/2026 3:23 PM, Robert Carnegie wrote:

On 18/02/2026 02:54, Cryptoengineer wrote:

This is cool. It uses cone bleaching and after images to create a
color in your eyes you've never seen.

Not SF, but this is the nearest thing to The
Color Out of Space I've ever encountered.


https://youtu.be/Q6jyq_RY8i8
Showing you a color yourCOve never seen before.
Channel: A Brush with Bekah

The whole channel is worth browsing. She makes
paints using classical recipes, and explains
their history. Want to see actual Uranium
Yellow, Arsenic Green, Vermilion, ultramarine,
and Royal Purple?

Now what's that short story, possibly on Mars,
where it's determined that a sense which the
aliens have and humans don't, can be given by
stimulating a certain part of the brain -
to appreciate an alien performed art form -
but the stimulation is destructive.

Obviously, a human undergoes the process,
appreciates the art form, and then regrets
that they now can never experience it again.

I don't think it's "A Nose For Ecclesiastes".

The Secret Sense, by Asimov.

pt

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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written


Tony Nance <tnusenet17@gmail.com> writes:

On 2/17/26 9:54 PM, Cryptoengineer wrote:

This is cool. It uses cone bleaching and after images to create a
color in your eyes you've never seen.

Not SF, but this is the nearest thing to The
Color Out of Space I've ever encountered.


https://youtu.be/Q6jyq_RY8i8
Showing you a color you've never seen before.
Channel: A Brush with Bekah

Interesting - thanks.

The whole channel is worth browsing. She makes
paints using classical recipes, and explains
their history. Want to see actual Uranium
Yellow, Arsenic Green, Vermilion, ultramarine,
and Royal Purple?

In this newsgroup, in this thread, somebody should mention "octarine".

So I am.

By the same token,

There are colors the human eye cannot see. The Damned Thing was
of such a color.
--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

On 23 Feb 2026 21:56:04 -0400, Mike Spencer wrote:

There are colors the human eye cannot see.

I wonder if those colours are *that* different from the ones most of
us *can* see.

I ask because I see an analogy between light and sound: in sound,
there is a perceived similarity between the frequencies of two tones
if their ratio is an exact power of 2 -- that is, if their musical
pitches are a whole number of octaves apart.

If you look at the frequencies of EM radiation covered by the spectrum
of visible light (about 400-700nm), you will see it is almost a 2:1
ratio -- in other words, nearly a whole octave.

If we could see a whole octave of frequencies, I suspect the colours
at the two ends would look similar somehow. I envision each complete
octave as basically a circle around the CIE chromaticity diagram. Or
perhaps the path would be a spiral along a third dimension.
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