Jonathon Keats

Jonathon Keats (born October 2 1971) is an American conceptual artist known for creating large-scale thought experiments. Keats was born in New York City and studied philosophy at Amherst College [ [http://halogen.note.amherst.edu/%7Eastudent/2007-2008/issue07/news/03.html Amherst Student] ] . He now lives in San Francisco.

Conceptual Art Projects

Keats made his debut in 2000 at Refusalon in San Francisco, where he sat in a chair and thought for twenty-four hours, with a female model posing nude in the gallery. His thoughts were sold to patrons as art, at a price determined by dividing their annual income down to the minute. [ [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/10/31/DD25908.DTL San Francisco Chronicle] ]

In 2002 Keats held a petition drive to pass the Law of Identity, A=A, a law of logic, as statutory law in Berkeley, California. Specifically, the proposed law stated that, "every entity shall be identical to itself". Any entity caught being unidentical to itself was to be subject to a fine of up to one tenth of a cent. The law did not pass. However it did spark a copycat petition drive in Santa Cruz, California. [ [http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/March-April-2003/scene_marapr03_slater.html Legal Affairs] ] [ [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/08/13/BA200448.DTL San Francisco Chronicle] ]

Keats copyrighted his mind in 2003, claiming that it was a sculpture that he'd created, neural network by neural network, through the act of thinking. The reason, he told the BBC World Service when interviewed about the project, was to attain temporary immortality, on the grounds that the Copyright Act would give him intellectual property rights on his mind for a period of seventy years after his death. [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3217423.stm BBC World Service] ] He reasoned that, if he licensed out those rights, he'd fulfill the Cogito ("I think, therefore I am"), paradoxically surviving himself by seven decades. In order to fund the posthumous marketing of intellectual property rights to his mind, he sold futures contracts on his brain in an IPO at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco. [ [http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,60757,00.html Wired News] ] The project was later included in Ripley's Believe It Or Not. [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=bCsKAAAACAAJ&dq=%22ripley%27s+believe+it+or+not%22+2004&num=100 Ripley's Believe It Or Not] ]

Keats is most famous for attempting to genetically engineer God in a laboratory , a 2004 collaboration with geneticists at UC Berkeley. He did so in order to determine scientifically where to place God as a species on the phylogenetic tree. In interviews with journalists, he indicated that his initial results showed a close taxonomic relationship to cyanobacteria, but cautioned that his pilot study, which relied on continuous in vitro evolution, was not definitive, urging interested parties to pursue their own research, and to submit findings to the International Association for Divine Taxonomy, on which he served as executive director. [ [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/10/20/god.DTL&hw=jonathon+keats&sn=001&sc=1000 SF Gate] ] [ [http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65066,00.html Wired News] ]

In 2005 he started customizing the metric system for patrons including Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and Pop artist Ed Ruscha. He did so by recalibrating time to each person's heartbeat, and mathematically deriving a new length for the meter, liter, kilogram, and calorie accordingly. [ [http://europastar.com/europastar/magazine/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002274749&imw=Y Europa Star] ]

Around the same time, he became interested in extraterrestrial abstract art, and began producing canvas paintings based on signals detected by the Arecibo Observatory radiotelescope in Puerto Rico. [ [http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg19125623.200.html New Scientist] ] [ [http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,71505-0.html?tw=wn_culture_2 Wired News] ] This was the basis of the First Intergalactic Art Exposition, a 2006 solo show at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, California. [ [http://www.magnes.org/ Magnes Museum] ] As part of this exhibition, he also transmitted his own abstract artwork out into the cosmos. [ [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/31/BAGI1K8DTE1.DTL San Francisco Chronicle] ] [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20060730/ai_n16654411 Oakland Tribune] ] [ [http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issues/2006-08-02/culture/culturewatch.html East Bay Express] ]

In 2006 Keats undertook several new projects, including two collaborations with other species: In rural Georgia, he gave fifty Leyland cypress trees the opportunity to make art by providing them with easels. [ [http://www.accessatlanta.com/hp/content/arts/stories/2006/10/25/1029arfolk.html Atlanta Journal-Constitution] ] [ [http://extremecraft.typepad.com/extreme_craft/2006/09/pinetings.html Extreme Craft] ] In Chico, California, he choreographed a ballet for honeybees by selectively planting flowers on the Chico State University farm, reverse engineering honeybee communication to suggest dance arrangements inside hives. [ [http://www.theorion.com/media/storage/paper889/news/2006/12/06/Entertainment/Secret.Ballet.Of.Bees-2523414.shtml?norewrite200612231903&sourcedomain=www.theorion.com Chico Orion] ] Meanwhile, at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco, he applied string theory to real estate development, enlisting the legal framework of air rights to buy and sell properties in the extra dimensions of space theorized by physics. To encourage speculation, the artist created blueprints for a four-dimensional tesseract house that purchasers might use as a vacation home. [ [http://www.newscientist.com/blog/space/2006/11/movin-on-up.html New Scientist] ] [ [http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kalw/.artsmain/article/13/424/1006435/Artery/Artery.December.7/ KALW Radio] ] One hundred and seventy-two lots on six Bay Area properties were bought on the first day of sales. [ [http://www.carealestatejournal.com/newswire/index.cfm?sid=&tkn=&eid=882973&evid=1 California Real Estate Journal] ]

In 2007, Keats created a mobile ring tone based on the John Cage composition 4'33", a remix comprising precisely four minutes and thirty-three seconds of digital silence, [ [http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9676441-1.html CNET] ] sparking controversy in the classical music community [ [http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2007/01/where_cage_failed.html PostClassic] ] [ [http://www.sequenza21.com/index.php/233 Sequenza21] ] , and the world of technology [ [http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/01/worlds_first_si.html Wired News] ] . Titled "My Cage (Silence for Cellphone)", the ringtone has since been broadcast on public radio in both the United States [ [http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/01/25/museumjokes/ American Public Media] ] and Sweden [ [http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/P1/program/artikel.asp?ProgramID=1637&artikel=1245195 Swedish Radio] ] . In Chico, California, Keats opened the world's first porn theater for house plants, projecting video footage of pollination onto the foliage of ninety rhododendrons. [ [http://www.chicobeat.com/?q=art_preview_desperate_houseplants Chico Beat] ] [ [http://rhizome.org/editorial/news/story.php?timestamp=20070829 Rhizome News] ] [ [http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9770112-1.html CNET] ] He released a cinematic trailer on YouTube. [ [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZqzr5ANi7I YouTube Trailer] ] His film was widely commented upon in the media [ [http://blog.washingtonpost.com/offbeat/2007/09/of_art_vegetation_and_the_bird_1.html Washington Post] ] [ [http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/09/worlds_first_porno_for_plants_not.html New York Magazine] ] following coverage by Reuters [ [http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSN0720247820070907?pageNumber=1 Reuters] ] and the BBC News Hour. [ [http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/newshour BBC] ] At the RT Hansen Gallery [ [http://www.inc-berlin.com RT Hansen Gallery] ] in Berlin, Germany, he sold arts patrons the experience of spending money. [ [http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2007/09/a-busy-season-f.html Wired News] ] For an exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum, [ [http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/digitalart/ripmixburn/TXT0190 Berkeley Art Museum] ] he designed a new kind of electronic voting booth, based on a nationwide network of ouija boards. [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20071202/ai_n21142029 Oakland Tribune] ] [ [http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/democrazy/ouijavote-2008-opens-door-to-paranormal-democracy-arguably-better-than-diebold-315167.php Gizmodo] ] While ouija voting booths have yet to be implemented in a major election, California Magazine cited the project in a 2007 round-up of "25 Brilliant California Ideas". [ [http://www.alumni.berkeley.edu/California/200801/ideas/17.asp California Magazine] ] At Modernism Gallery in San Francisco the following month, Keats developed new miracles, including novel solar systems and supernova pyrotechnic displays, which he made available for licensing by gods. [ [http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/10/artist-offers-g.html Wired News] ] [ [http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9805318-1.html CNET] ] [ [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/09/DDVTT8R3H.DTL San Francisco Chronicle] ] In addition, he composed a sonata to be performed on the constellations, [ [http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision/2007/12/keats_in_orbit.html San Francisco Bay Guardian] ] released through GarageBand. [ [http://www.garageband.com/artist/jonathonkeats/songs GarageBand Sonata] ]

Keats brought his honeybee ballet to San Francisco in 2008 as part of Bay Area Now, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts triennial. [ [http://www.ybca.org/exhibitions/artists/jonathon-keats.aspx Yerba Buena Center for the Arts] ] [ [http://www.joshspear.com/item/jonathon-keats-bee-ballet/ JoshSpear.com] ] [ [http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2008/07/jonathan-keats.html Wired Blogs] ] He also erected the first temple devoted to the worship of science, dubbed "the Atheon", [ [http://www.magnes.org/atheon Atheon Website] ] in downtown Berkeley, CA, [ [http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2008-07-03/article/30481?headline=Magnes-Museum-Moves-Ahead-with-Downtown-Berkeley-Relocation-Plans Berkeley Daily Planet] ] a public art project commissioned by the Judah L. Magnes Museum [ [http://www.magnes.org/pr/atheon.htm Judah L Magnes Museum] ] and funded with a grant from the University of California. [ [http://www.dailycal.org/article/102717/local_artist_explores_worship_of_science Daily Californian] ] The Atheon opened on September 27, 2008. [ [http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2008/09/temple-for-worship-of-science.html New Scientist] ] [ [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/realitybase/2008/09/10/want-to-worship-the-god-of-science-heres-your-temple/ Discover] ] [ [http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/05/sf-artist-makes-a-te.html Boing Boing] ] [ [http://valleywag.com/5046144/the-atheon-a-temple-of-science-coming-to-berkeley Valleywag] ] [ [http://io9.com/5049671/call-to-worship-at-the-temple-of-science io9] ] After a Wired Science interview with the artist was featured on the Yahoo homepage on September 29, [ [http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/can-science-rep.html Wired Science] ] , controversy erupted in both the scientific [ [http://richarddawkins.net/article,3187,n,n RichardDawkins.net] ] and religious [ [http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?p=243193 LandoverBaptist.net] ] [ [http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=4234089 Catholic.com] ] [ [http://www.icr.org/articles/view/4142/ Institute for Creation Research] ] communities, and interest in the Atheon gained traction worldwide. [ [http://www.pcworld.pl/news/168743/Artysta.wybudowal.Swiatynie.Nauki.html PC World (Poland)] ] [ [http://www.tyden.cz/rubriky/veda-a-technika/veda/kalifornske-umelecke-muzeum-otevrelo-chram-vedy_83021.html Tyden (Czech Republic)] ] [ [http://www.tekniikkatalous.fi/viihde/article141358.ece Tekniikka & Talous (Finland)] ] [ [http://www.sputnik.com.mx//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1316&Itemid=35 Sputnik (Mexico)] ]

Related Work

Keats is also the art critic for San Francisco Magazine, and writes about art for publications including Art in America, Art & Auction, ArtNews, and Artweek. He's a book critic as well, and the author of two novels, The Pathology of Lies, published in English by Warner Books, [ [http://www.salon.com/books/review/1999/05/12/keats/index.html Salon.com] ] [ [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1999/05/02/RV18331.DTL&hw=jonathon+keats&sn=002&sc=742 San Francisco Chronicle] ] and Lighter Than Vanity, published exclusively in Russian by Eksmo. [ [http://www1.eksmo.ru/catalog/book?b=63551 Eksmo] ] A collection of fables, titled The Book of the Unknown, is scheduled to be published by Random House in February 2009. [ [http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780812978971.html Random House] ]

References

External links

* [http://www.kqed.org/arts/people/spark/profile.jsp?id=4504 KQED-TV/PBS short documentary]
* [http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Portraits/fun_with_art Good Magazine profile]
* [http://magnes.org/exhibits/keatsmovie.htm Judah L. Magnes Museum documentary]
* [http://www.sfweekly.com/2004-08-18/news/god-of-the-flies/ SF Weekly profile]
* [http://mondoglobo.net/neofiles/?p=30/ NeoFiles audio interview with RU Sirius]
* [http://rhizome.org/profile.php?1049261/ Jonathon Keats on Rhizome]
* [http://www.modernisminc.com/artists/Jonathon_KEATS/ Jonathon Keats at Modernism Gallery]