Conceptual Artist Discovers Undeveloped Acreage Through Latest Particle

Physics ... Plans to Sell Prime California Properties for Under Ten Dollars

... Exclusive Public Offering at San Francisco's Modernism Gallery

Scheduled for November 16th ...

    SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Reconciling quantum mechanics
 and general relativity, string theory is seen by the most sophisticated
 physicists as an emerging theory of everything. Now the most advanced land
 speculators are looking at the same mathematics -- and calculating the
 greatest real estate opportunity since Columbus arrived in America.
     While Columbus was a shrewd businessman, the latest terra incognita has
 been discovered by a conceptual artist with considerably less financial
 acumen. "I wasn't really looking to make money," confides Jonathon Keats,
 whose previous art projects have included such commercially dubious
 ventures as an attempt to genetically engineer God at UC Berkeley. "I've
 always lived month to month, as a renter. I never considered owning land,
 let alone becoming a developer, until I had a good close look at the nature
 of spacetime earlier this year."
     According to string theory, spacetime is more extensive than people
 ordinarily experience. Beyond the customary three dimensions of space and
 one dimension of time, there are six or seven additional dimensions,
 accommodating the complex vibrations of miniscule strings. "The strings'
 vibrations give rise to matter, but that's beside the point," says Mr.
 Keats. "The important thing is that real estate in cities from San
 Francisco to New York is selling at a premium, unaffordable to many, and
 here are half a dozen or more extra dimensions of space, just going to
 waste."
     Mr. Keats, working in consultation with leading researchers including
 Shaw Prize-winning cosmologist Saul Perlmutter, realized that rights to
 develop in these extra dimensions could be bought very inexpensively. "The
 legal framework was already in place," he says. "People like Donald Trump
 buy and sell air rights over city buildings all the time. If the third
 dimension is negotiable, the higher dimensions must be as well."
 Accordingly, the artist/developer bought extra-dimensional rights to his
 first property, a flat in San Francisco's exclusive North Beach district,
 on August 19th. While the lower-dimensional space is valued at
 approximately $1,027,000, Mr. Keats purchased rights to the extra
 dimensions, with a legally-binding contract, for a mere $5.00. He has since
 bought higher-dimensional rights to five other properties in San Francisco
 and Marin County for between $1.80 and $15.00.
     "Nobody really wanted the rights," Mr. Keats recalls, "and I guess that
 I can understand why." The extra dimensions, like the strings vibrating in
 them, are very small, many orders of magnitude smaller than an atom.
 "They're a bit inaccessible by conventional means, but they're everywhere,
 so you could build in them quite expansively with fine enough plaster or
 maybe bricks." Mr. Keats admits that such materials are currently beyond
 the reach even of the latest nanotechnology, but he isn't worried.
 "Actually, the way to look at the real estate in these extra dimensions is
 as vacation properties."
     To make up for the inconveniences associated with the scale of the
 higher dimensions, Mr. Keats proposes that there are more of them than
 there are lower dimensions. "You can really spread out," he says,
 demonstrating the design potential with four-dimensional architecture that
 he has drafted for these extra-dimensional spaces. Complete blueprints will
 be on view at Modernism Gallery, where Mr. Keats will offer a portfolio of
 properties, subdivided into uniform lots, beginning on Thursday, November
 16th at 5:30 pm. What will happen after that, the artist won't predict.
 "This is a highly speculative market," he says. "But somebody had to put
 string theory into practice."
     Jonathon Keats is a conceptual artist, novelist, and critic. For his
 most recent project, at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, he
 exhibited extraterrestrial abstract artwork. He has also attempted to
 genetically engineer God in a petri dish, in collaboration with scientists
 at the University of California, and petitioned Berkeley to pass a
 fundamental law of logic -- A=A -- a work commissioned by the city's annual
 Arts Festival. He has been awarded Yaddo, MacDowell, Ucross, and MacNamara
 fellowships, and his projects have been documented by KQED-TV and the BBC
 World Service, as well as periodicals ranging from The San Francisco
 Chronicle to The Boston Globe to New Scientist. He is represented by
 Modernism Gallery in San Francisco. For more information, please contact
 Mr. Keats at jonathon_keats@yahoo.com, or see
 http://www.modernisminc.com/artists/Jonathon_KEATS/
 
 

SOURCE Jonathon Keats

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