Hi Evrybahdy!

[Joseph Tracy]

One personally testable effect of complementary colors that I find intriguing has to do with afterimage.  If you stare at a  colored shape against a neutral background ( white, grey, black)  for say 20 seconds and then close your eyes, the color you see will shift to its complement: red/magenta to green( red will produce a medium or  dark blue green, magenta a pale aqua green) , blue to orange, yellow to purple. two comlements always add up to 3 primaries: yellow ( first primary) plus purple( red plus blue second 2 primaries) . This effect can be done quite well with a computer screen in a darkish room with a simple paint program.
What exactly this means is debatable, but it seems like the mind provides a complement to what is being observed or considered. Perhaps any perception of anything is only possible in reference to the larger whole, yin yang style. I assume that to see red requires the temporaray suppression of the receptors for blues and yellows that make green, a suppression that is its own internal  shadow color which becomes internally luminous when the eyes are closed. 
   A fairly universal effect of psychoactive drugs is the perception of the emanation of colors  and patterns from higher energy sources like music, eyes, art, flowers fruit etc. It may be that the complementary effects being produced by perceptions are no longer suppressed -   that there is no longer any clear hierarchy of perception..   In my experience magenta and green are particularly exaggerated in the plant world or in the dark. 
In Pynchon they seem to me  to have 2  or 3 effects; 1 as markers of a mid zone between nonphysical and physical planes, or 2, simply a perception of dissipating energy( entropy) seen as colored light. They can also mark an acidic environment , danger, threat. 

On Jun 5, 2017, at 7:07 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I like this theory. M&D is full of characters with names like Wicks
> and Tenebrae ('shadows') and Lomax, which I swear is something to do
> with light or electricity. And AtD virtually treats light as a
> character throughout the novel, beginning with the epigraph ("It's
> always night, or we wouldn't need light").
> I always approached the magenta/green combo as something to do with
> their complementarity, ie they're 'opposite' colours so they produce
> the greatest contrast possible to the human eye. You can get a sense
> of the effect just on the Wikipedia page for complementarity:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_colors
> It's close to an optical illusion, the effect the contrast has on the
> eye. Supposedly complementary colours cancel each other out and create
> white or black as a result but I don't really understand what that's
> all about.
> 
> On Mon, Jun 5, 2017 at 1:00 AM, da kid <peterock86 at live.com> wrote:
>> Cool thanks. Only skimmed the article so far but I like the idea of
>> purple/green indicating Slothrop is a projection. It agrees with my vague
>> understanding of Pynchon's "hologram style characters" that his ex-gf said
>> he was trying to create. I was wowed by that comment of hers when I read it
>> on some obscure blog because previously I had been a fan of an essay on M&D
>> comparing it's structure to a magic eye a.k.a. auto-stereogram.
>> 
>> I'm currently finishing up ATD so there are two scenes that have stuck with
>> me that I think have something to do with this. One is the scene where the
>> Chums meet the Trespassers at Candlebrow U. where they dematerialize and
>> reappear. At first they have a magenta and green edge to them and then a
>> blue and orange tone (he's more specific of course).
>> The second is the scene when Kit is at the sanitorium after dodging Foley at
>> Gottingen. This goofy scene features among other things a distracting
>> necktie in magenta and green that if look at right can show entertaining
>> images. I'm personally of the opinion that this scene is one of a handful in
>> ATD where Pynchon rolls out his old standby themes  from his other books.
>> There's a football making a parabola I believe and the jelly doughnut  guy
>> who I suspect is the disguised  Eucharist - cannibalism question of Rec'd
>> Cherrycoke's. Another big part of this scene is the "doctor" Dinkopf's
>> anti-Semitic hangups. He is a proto-Nazi who suspects everyone is Jewish. To
>> me this sounds like Docs phone call to his Aunt in the  Inherent Vice movie
>> (I haven't read that one) about I think Mickey Wolfman- "He's secretly
>> Jewish but thinks he's a Nazi". Dr. Hilarius too. I don't know if all these
>> allusions are supposed to tie in a certain way or if it is some kind of
>> Pynchon montage.
>> I may be rambling too much here so basically magenta and green has something
>> to do with holograms or 3d projections or perhaps television?
>> 
>> ________________________________
>> From: Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>> Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2017 8:51:32 AM
>> To: da kid
>> Cc: Pynchon-l
>> Subject: Re: Hi Evrybahdy!
>> 
>> Magenta & green, etc -- "Coloring Gravity's Rainbow", downloadable:
>> 
>> https://pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/articles/abstract/10.16995/pn.374/
>> 
>> 
>> On Sat, Jun 3, 2017 at 3:49 PM, da kid <peterock86 at live.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi I've been reading the p-list archives for a little while now and admire
>>> the ideas of alot of the people here. Entries by Andrew Dinn, John Bailey,
>>> Doug Millison among many others are Imho far better than New Yorker or NYT
>>> essays for understanding TRP's books. I have tried to talk about Pynchon on
>>> Reddit but I rarely ever encounter anyone who really wants to dive into the
>>> text. So, I am excited to hopefully discuss some of the theories and whatnot
>>> that have been bugging me for awhile. Pynchon's ubiqui-themes like:
>>> 
>>>   Ourobouros through the ring
>>> 
>>> Magenta and green specifically and his hangup with particular shades
>>> pigments in general.
>>> 
>>>  Holograms/Layers
>>>  His "cartoonish" characterization that Chrissie Wexler refers to in
>>> Lineland.
>>> 
>>> Vibrating to stay invisible (CoC & Inconvenience, the revealing of America
>>> in M&D)
>>> 
>>>  The Eucharist
>>>   The Holy Ghost and the Pentecost
>>> 
>>> as well as my pet theories about the Hairy Ball Theorem in M&D and Donald
>>> Barthelme as Dixon. I could keep rambling on but I'll stop for now.
>>> 
>>> Anyways, I hope to get to the bottom of all this malarkey and reveal the
>>> authors perverse schemes once and for all...
>>> 
>>> Pete
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l