Uncovering the Hidden Secrets of Alphapointillism
Jonathan van der Meer and
Lagâri Hasan Çelebi
Center for Computational
Bioinformatics and Linguistics
NYC, NY
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jot and La Tour Affixal, two of Georges Seubscript’s most famous and most important works.
In 1889, only a few short years before his untimely death in an unfortunate palato-uvular co-articulation accident, famed and acclaimed alphapointillist Georges Seubscript created a truly enigmatic work, the purpose and subject of which has mystified and bewildered historical linguists and art historians alike for many decades.
Unlike his more famous alphapointillist works, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jot” and “La Tour Affixal” (shown above), this more mysterious piece, known only as “rkasmsursa”, does not seem to depict any particular image, even when viewed, as most alphapointillist works should be, from a considerable distance. The image never really “emerges”.
Using multi-spectral gamma-ray imaging—a further advance from the imaging techniques used to decipher the Oxyrhynchus papyri and a pile of moldy old photos found in the SpecGram offices that turned out to be from the 1929 Annual International Men of Philology/Women of Anthropology Multidisciplinary Mixer—we have been able to uncover the underlying three-dimensional micro-structure of the mysterious “rkasmsursa”.
The original rkasmsursa, in all its enigmatic glory.
rkasmsursa revealed via gamma-ray imaging—It’s Benjamin Lee Whorf!
To our surprise, not only were we able to resolve a clear latent image, we immediately recognized the portrait of a famous linguist—none other than Benjamin Lee Whorf. Successive refinements are shown above, alongside the original.
Given that Whorf was born only two years before Seubscript’s painting was completed, we at first suspected a hoax of some sort. Several well-respected linguistic historians and historical artists have examined the painting, and have declared it genuine.
The only explanation that makes any sense, given the facts at hand, is that Benjamin Lee Whorf and Georges Seubscript made some sort of contact through a temporal rift. Given the lack of physical evidence, the contact was probably limited to visual and perhaps auditory rather than in-person contact (unless you posit some ridiculous conspiracy suppressing relevant evidence—which is unjustifiably absurd).
The extent to which the two linguists were able to share ideas and inspiration is a mystery that will likely never be solved.
