Jonathon Keats
Encyclopedia
Jonathon Keats is an American
conceptual artist and experimental philosopher known for creating large-scale thought experiments. Keats was born in New York City
and studied philosophy
at Amherst College
. He now lives in San Francisco.
for 24 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.
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. Deemed "too weird for Berkeley" in an Oakland Tribune headline, the law did not pass. However it did become a topic of debate in the 2002 Massachusetts
gubernatorial campaign, and sparked a copycat petition drive in Santa Cruz, California
. In the same year, amidst tightening post-9/11 security, Keats initiated a series of anonymous self-portraits of visitors to the San Francisco Arts Commission
Gallery, created by fingerprinting them as they entered the building. And at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco, he premiered his first musical composition, "1001 Concertos for Tuning Fork
s and Audience".
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. He reasoned that, if he licensed out those rights, he would fulfill the Cogito ergo sum
("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 contract
s on his brain
in an IPO at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco. The project attracted interest in Silicon Valley. It was later included in News of the Weird
and 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.
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.
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
. This was the basis of the First Intergalactic Art Exposition, a 2006 solo show at the Judah L. Magnes Museum
in Berkeley, California. As part of this exhibition, he also transmitted his own abstract artwork out into the cosmos.
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. 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. Keats also turned to himself as the subject of a lifelong thought experiment
, undertaken through the act of living. To make the experiment scientifically rigorous, he established a scientific control
in the form of a high-density carbon graphite
block precisely calibrated to match the carbon
weight of his own body. The block was placed on display under a bell jar
at the Exploratorium
in San Francisco. And 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. One hundred and seventy-two lots on six Bay Area properties were bought on the first day of sales.
In 2007, Keats created a mobile ring tone based on the John Cage
composition 4'33", a remix
comprising precisely four minutes and 33 seconds of digital silence, sparking controversy in the classical music community, and the world of technology, while attracting a following in the world of astrology. Titled "My Cage (Silence for Cellphone)", the ringtone has since been broadcast on public radio in both the United States and Sweden, and discussed in a monograph about Cage published by Yale University Press
. 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. He released a cinematic trailer on YouTube
. His film was widely commented upon in the media following coverage by Reuters
and the BBC
News Hour. At the RT Hansen Gallery in Berlin, Germany, he sold arts patrons the experience of spending money. For an exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum, he designed a new kind of electronic voting booth
, based on a nationwide network of ouija boards. 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". 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. In addition, he composed a sonata
to be performed on the constellations
, released through GarageBand
.
Keats brought his honeybee ballet to San Francisco in 2008 as part of Bay Area Now, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
triennial. He also erected the first temple
devoted to the worship of science, dubbed "the Atheon", in downtown Berkeley, CA, a public art
project commissioned by the Judah L. Magnes Museum
and funded with a grant from the University of California
. The Atheon opened on September 27, 2008. After a Wired Science
interview with the artist was featured on the Yahoo homepage on September 29, controversy erupted in both the scientific and religious communities, and interest in the Atheon gained traction worldwide.
A Synod
was held inside the Atheon on December 4, with participants including UC Berkeley philosopher John Campbell
and UC Berkeley astrophysicist Ilan Roth.
In the midst of the Atheon debate, Keats announced that he had discovered a way to play God
, using quantum mechanics
to generate new universes. Enlisting the many worlds interpretation of physicist Hugh Everett
, his process made use of readily-available equipment including uranium
-doped glass and scintillating crystal
, all acquired on eBay
. After building several prototypes, Keats manufactured a simple D.I.Y. kit
that purported to let anyone create new universes with a mason jar
, a drinking straw
, and a piece of chewing gum
, a gadget much commented upon in the media and widely popular in the blogosphere. In an exhibition at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco, Keats sold the kits for $20 apiece, and also presented plans, simultaneously submitted to the United States Department of Energy
, for a much larger factory
, which would generate new universes from the nuclear waste slated to be buried in the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in the next decade. His proposal has proven controversial.
In early 2009, Keats was an artist-in-residence at Montana State University
in Bozeman, where he opened the world's second porn theater for house plants, based on the porn theater he opened in Chico, CA in 2007, but in this case catering to an audience of local zinnias. He also composed a song to be performed by Mandeville Creek on the MSU campus, orchestrated by rearranging rocks melodically, using the musical structure of the medieval rondeau
. In June, Keats created "The Longest Story Ever Told," a 9 word story printed on the cover of the eighth issue of Opium Magazine
, "The Infinity Issue." The story is printed in a double layer of black ink, with the second layer screened to make each successive word fractionally less vulnerable to ultraviolet radiation. When exposed to sunlight, words will appear at a rate of one per century over the next one thousand years, an effort deemed one of the seven best magazine tech innovations by Tech Radar and called Joycean
by NBC
, but judged to be "about as practical as a shark in formaldehyde" by the Independent (UK). Keats attempted to counteract the global recession
in November by introducing a mirror economy backed by antimatter. In order to implement his idea, Keats opened an "anti-bank" which issued paper currency in units of 10,000 positrons and higher. Featured on Good Magazine
's annual Good 100 list, Keats's First Bank of Antimatter was championed by New Scientist
as "a true attempt to make something out of nothing" and lambasted by The Discovery Channel as "the epitome of caveat emptor
".
Keats introduced four new projects in 2010. In January he created a pinhole camera
intended to take a single 100-year-long exposure. Printed in Good Magazine
, the simple box camera
was designed to be cut out, folded, and glued together, and then left to take a picture which the magazine promised to publish in a "special folio" as part of the January 2110 issue. In February, Keats expanded his filmmaking for plants into a new genre. Observing that plants aren't mobile, he produced a travel documentary
- showing footage of Italian skies - which he screened for an audience of ficus
and palm trees at the AC Institute in New York City
through early March, and later in the year presented to an audience of mixed species, with musical accompaniment by the composer Theresa Wong, at the Berkeley Art Museum in California. He also produced an online version of the movie for viewing by plants at home, posted by Wired News
Following an AFP
wire story, news of the travel documentaries was reported worldwide, though not in Italy. Keats launched an alternative space agency, the Local Air and Space Administration (LASA), in October. Headquartered at California State University, Chico
, the organization claimed to be taking on the exploratory role abandoned by NASA
, and announced simultaneous missions to the Moon
and Mars
. Rather than building rockets, LASA amassed lunar and martian terrain locally in California, by pulverizing meteorites. The first LASA astronauts were potatoes grown in water mineralized with lunar anorthosite
and martian shergottite, exploring the Moon and Mars by osmosis
, according to Keats, who further argued that the minerals they absorbed over their month-long missions made them "alien
hybrids". LASA also entered the space tourism
business, offering humans the opportunity to explore the Moon and Mars by buying and drinking bottled lunar and martian mineral waters at an "exotourism bureau" in San Francisco. At the same time that he was managing the Local Air & Space Administration, Keats started independently to produce pornography
for God
. The source for his pornography was the Large Hadron Collider
(LHC) which had just begun to replicate Big Bang
conditions at a small scale. Reasoning that the Big Bang was "divine coitus", Keats screened a live feed from the LHC on a votive altar
. He opened his "porn palace for God" at the alternative art space Louis V. ESP in Brooklyn, New York. While Keats explained that he had become "God's pornographer" in order to encourage God to create additional universes since our own was doomed by cosmic expansion, worldwide opinion on the worthiness of his project was mixed.
for San Francisco
magazine, and writes about art for publications including Art & Antiques, Art in America
, Art + Auction, ArtNews
, and Artweek. He is also a book critic and journalist
, and his reporting for Popular Science
has been included in The Best American Science Writing
2007. He is a writer and commentator on new language, the Jargon Watch columnist for Wired Magazine the author of a devil's dictionary of technology, and a book of essays, "Virtual Words: Language on the Edge of Science and Technology", which Oxford University Press
published in October 2010.
Each chapter examines the co-evolution of language and society in terms of a novel word, such as exopolitics and in vitro meat
. Keats is a fiction writer as well, the author of two novels, The Pathology of Lies, published in English by Warner Books, and Lighter Than Vanity, published exclusively in Russian by Eksmo. The Book of the Unknown, a collection of fables loosely based on Talmudic legend, was published by Random House
in February 2009 and awarded the Sophie Brody Medal by the American Library Association
in 2010. While the stories are said by Kirkus to have "echoes of Isaac Bashevis Singer
, Sholom Aleichem
and S.Y. Agnon", Salon.com
compares them to The Princess Bride
("without the gloss"). Since publication, the most persistent question has been whether the author Jonathon Keats is the same person as the conceptual artist. (A reviewer for the New York Observer
even deconstructed his Wikipedia
entry.) However Keats has assured interviewers that the writer and artist are the same person, telling Salon that his fables, like his art, are a form of thought experiment.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
conceptual artist and experimental philosopher known for creating large-scale thought experiments. Keats was born in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and studied philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
at Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
. 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 thoughtThought
"Thought" generally refers to any mental or intellectual activity involving an individual's subjective consciousness. It can refer either to the act of thinking or the resulting ideas or arrangements of ideas. Similar concepts include cognition, sentience, consciousness, and imagination...
for 24 hours, with a female model
Model (person)
A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....
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.
In 2002 Keats held a petition drive to pass the Law of Identity
Law of identity
In logic, the law of identity is the first of the so-called three classic laws of thought. It states that an object is the same as itself: A → A ; While this can also be listed as A ≡ A this is redundant Any reflexive relation upholds the law of identity...
, A ≡ A, a law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
of logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
, as statutory law in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
. 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. Deemed "too weird for Berkeley" in an Oakland Tribune headline, the law did not pass. However it did become a topic of debate in the 2002 Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
gubernatorial campaign, and sparked a copycat petition drive in Santa Cruz, California
Santa Cruz, California
Santa Cruz is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, California in the US. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, Santa Cruz had a total population of 59,946...
. In the same year, amidst tightening post-9/11 security, Keats initiated a series of anonymous self-portraits of visitors to the San Francisco Arts Commission
San Francisco Arts Commission
The San Francisco Arts Commission is the official San Francisco County, USA arts council.The San Francisco Arts Commission It was established in 1932 and runs under the California state arts council, the California Arts Council . The commission is appointed by the major...
Gallery, created by fingerprinting them as they entered the building. And at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco, he premiered his first musical composition, "1001 Concertos for Tuning Fork
Tuning fork
A tuning fork is an acoustic resonator in the form of a two-pronged fork with the prongs formed from a U-shaped bar of elastic metal . It resonates at a specific constant pitch when set vibrating by striking it against a surface or with an object, and emits a pure musical tone after waiting a...
s and Audience".
Keats copyrighted his mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
in 2003, claiming that it was a sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
that he'd created, neural network
Neural network
The term neural network was traditionally used to refer to a network or circuit of biological neurons. The modern usage of the term often refers to artificial neural networks, which are composed of artificial neurons or nodes...
by neural network, through the act of thinking. The reason, he told the BBC World Service
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...
when interviewed about the project, was to attain temporary immortality
Immortality
Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...
, on the grounds that the Copyright Act
Copyright Act
Copyright Act may refer to:Canada* Copyright Act of CanadaHong Kong*Copyright Ordinance 1997India*New Zealand* Copyright Act 1994United Kingdom...
would give him intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
rights on his mind for a period of seventy years after his death. He reasoned that, if he licensed out those rights, he would fulfill the Cogito ergo sum
Cogito ergo sum
is a philosophical Latin statement proposed by . The simple meaning of the phrase is that someone wondering whether or not they exist is, in and of itself, proof that something, an "I", exists to do the thinking — However this "I" is not the more or less permanent person we call "I"...
("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 contract
Futures contract
In finance, a futures contract is a standardized contract between two parties to exchange a specified asset of standardized quantity and quality for a price agreed today with delivery occurring at a specified future date, the delivery date. The contracts are traded on a futures exchange...
s on his brain
Brain
The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
in an IPO at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco. The project attracted interest in Silicon Valley. It was later included in News of the Weird
News of the Weird
News of the Weird is a syndicated newspaper column edited by Chuck Shepherd that collects bizarre news stories. It was created in 1988. , it is syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate and published in more than 250 newspapers in the United States and Canada. As of July 2008, the daily internet...
and Ripley's Believe It Or Not.
Keats is most famous for attempting to genetically engineer God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
in a laboratory
Laboratory
A laboratory is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. The title of laboratory is also used for certain other facilities where the processes or equipment used are similar to those in scientific laboratories...
, a 2004 collaboration with geneticists at UC Berkeley. He did so in order to determine scientifically where to place God as a species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
on the phylogenetic tree
Phylogenetic tree
A phylogenetic tree or evolutionary tree is a branching diagram or "tree" showing the inferred evolutionary relationships among various biological species or other entities based upon similarities and differences in their physical and/or genetic characteristics...
. 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.
In 2005 he started customizing the metric system
Metric system
The metric system is an international decimalised system of measurement. France was first to adopt a metric system, in 1799, and a metric system is now the official system of measurement, used in almost every country in the world...
for patrons including Craigslist
Craigslist
Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities featuring free online classified advertisements, with sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums....
founder Craig Newmark
Craig Newmark
Craig Alexander Newmark is an Internet entrepreneur best known for being the founder of the San Francisco-based international website Craigslist.-Biography:...
and Pop artist Ed Ruscha. He did so by recalibrating time
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
to each person's heartbeat, and mathematically deriving a new length for the meter, liter, kilogram
Kilogram
The kilogram or kilogramme , also known as the kilo, is the base unit of mass in the International System of Units and is defined as being equal to the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram , which is almost exactly equal to the mass of one liter of water...
, and calorie
Calorie
The calorie is a pre-SI metric unit of energy. It was first defined by Nicolas Clément in 1824 as a unit of heat, entering French and English dictionaries between 1841 and 1867. In most fields its use is archaic, having been replaced by the SI unit of energy, the joule...
accordingly.
Around the same time, he became interested in extraterrestrial
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
abstract art
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
, and began producing canvas paintings based on signals detected by the Arecibo Observatory
Arecibo Observatory
The Arecibo Observatory is a radio telescope near the city of Arecibo in Puerto Rico. It is operated by SRI International under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation...
radiotelescope in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
. This was the basis of the First Intergalactic Art Exposition, a 2006 solo show at the Judah L. Magnes Museum
Judah L. Magnes Museum
The Judah L. Magnes Museum is a museum of Jewish history, art, and culture in Berkeley, California. It was founded in 1962 by Seymour and Rebecca Fromer and named for Jewish activist Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, a native of Oakland...
in Berkeley, California. As part of this exhibition, he also transmitted his own abstract artwork out into the cosmos.
In 2006 Keats undertook several new projects, including two collaborations with other species: In rural Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
, he gave fifty Leyland cypress
Leyland Cypress
The Leyland Cypress, × Cupressocyparis leylandii , often referred to as just Leylandii, is a fast-growing evergreen tree much used in horticulture, primarily for hedges and screens. Even on sites of relatively poor culture, plants have been known to grow to heights of 15 metres in 16 years...
trees the opportunity to make art by providing them with easels. In Chico, California
Chico, California
Chico is the most populous city in Butte County, California, United States. The population was 86,187 at the 2010 census, up from 59,954 at the time of the 2000 census...
, he choreographed a ballet
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
for honeybees by selectively planting flowers on the Chico State University farm, reverse engineering
Reverse engineering
Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation...
honeybee communication to suggest dance arrangements inside hives. Keats also turned to himself as the subject of a lifelong thought experiment
Thought experiment
A thought experiment or Gedankenexperiment considers some hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences...
, undertaken through the act of living. To make the experiment scientifically rigorous, he established a scientific control
Scientific control
Scientific control allows for comparisons of concepts. It is a part of the scientific method. Scientific control is often used in discussion of natural experiments. For instance, during drug testing, scientists will try to control two groups to keep them as identical and normal as possible, then...
in the form of a high-density carbon graphite
Graphite
The mineral graphite is one of the allotropes of carbon. It was named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789 from the Ancient Greek γράφω , "to draw/write", for its use in pencils, where it is commonly called lead . Unlike diamond , graphite is an electrical conductor, a semimetal...
block precisely calibrated to match the carbon
Carbon
Carbon is the chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. As a member of group 14 on the periodic table, it is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds...
weight of his own body. The block was placed on display under a bell jar
Bell jar
A bell jar is a piece of laboratory equipment used for creating vacuums.http://www.belljar.net/about.htm It can be similar in shape to a bell, and can be manufactured out of a variety of materials . A bell jar is placed on a base which is vented to a hose fitting, which can be connected via a hose...
at the Exploratorium
Exploratorium
The Exploratorium is a museum in San Francisco with over 475 participatory exhibits, all of them made onsite, that mix science and art. It also aims to promote museums as informal education centers....
in San Francisco. And at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco, he applied string theory
String theory
String theory is an active research framework in particle physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is a contender for a theory of everything , a manner of describing the known fundamental forces and matter in a mathematically complete system...
to real estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
development, enlisting the legal framework of air rights
Air rights
Air rights are a type of development right in real estate, referring to the empty space above a property. Generally speaking, owning or renting land or a building gives one the right to use and develop the 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
Tesseract
In geometry, the tesseract, also called an 8-cell or regular octachoron or cubic prism, is the four-dimensional analog of the cube. The tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of 6 square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of 8...
house that purchasers might use as a vacation home. One hundred and seventy-two lots on six Bay Area properties were bought on the first day of sales.
In 2007, Keats created a mobile ring tone based on the John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
composition 4'33", a remix
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
comprising precisely four minutes and 33 seconds of digital silence, sparking controversy in the classical music community, and the world of technology, while attracting a following in the world of astrology. Titled "My Cage (Silence for Cellphone)", the ringtone has since been broadcast on public radio in both the United States and Sweden, and discussed in a monograph about Cage published by Yale University Press
Yale University Press
Yale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....
. In Chico, California
Chico, California
Chico is the most populous city in Butte County, California, United States. The population was 86,187 at the 2010 census, up from 59,954 at the time of the 2000 census...
, Keats opened the world's first porn
PORN
Porn is a common short form for pornography. It may also refer to:* Progressive outer retinal necrosis, a disease of the retina* PORN, a French industrial rock band...
theater for house plants, projecting video footage of pollination onto the foliage of ninety rhododendrons. He released a cinematic trailer on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
. His film was widely commented upon in the media following coverage by Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
and the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
News Hour. At the RT Hansen Gallery in Berlin, Germany, he sold arts patrons the experience of spending money. For an exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum, he designed a new kind of electronic voting booth
Voting booth
A voting booth or polling booth is a room or cabin in a polling station where voters are able to cast their vote in private to protect the secrecy of the ballot. Commonly the entrance to the voting booth is a retractable curtain...
, based on a nationwide network of ouija boards. 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". At Modernism Gallery in San Francisco the following month, Keats developed new miracles, including novel solar systems and supernova
Supernova
A supernova is a stellar explosion that is more energetic than a nova. It is pronounced with the plural supernovae or supernovas. Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or months...
pyrotechnic displays, which he made available for licensing by gods. In addition, he composed a sonata
Sonata
Sonata , in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata , a piece sung. The term, being vague, naturally evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms prior to the Classical era...
to be performed on the constellations
Constellations
Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal of critical and democratic theory and successor of Praxis International. It is edited by Andrew Arato, Amy Allen, and Andreas Kalyvas...
, released through GarageBand
GarageBand
GarageBand is a software application for Mac OS X and iOS that allows users to create music or podcasts. It is developed by Apple Inc. as a part of the iLife software package on Mac OS X.-Audio recording:...
.
Keats brought his honeybee ballet to San Francisco in 2008 as part of Bay Area Now, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is a multi-disiplinary contemporary arts center in San Francisco, California, United States. Located in Yerba Buena Gardens, YBCA features visual art, performance, and film/video that celebrates local, national, and international artists and the Bay Area's diverse...
triennial. He also erected the first temple
Temple
A temple is a structure reserved for religious or spiritual activities, such as prayer and sacrifice, or analogous rites. A templum constituted a sacred precinct as defined by a priest, or augur. It has the same root as the word "template," a plan in preparation of the building that was marked out...
devoted to the worship of science, dubbed "the Atheon", in downtown Berkeley, CA, a public art
Public art
The term public art properly refers to works of art in any media that have been planned and executed with the specific intention of being sited or staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all...
project commissioned by the Judah L. Magnes Museum
Judah L. Magnes Museum
The Judah L. Magnes Museum is a museum of Jewish history, art, and culture in Berkeley, California. It was founded in 1962 by Seymour and Rebecca Fromer and named for Jewish activist Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, a native of Oakland...
and funded with a grant from the University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
. The Atheon opened on September 27, 2008. After a Wired Science
WIRED Science
Wired Science is a weekly high-definition television program that covers modern scientific and technological topics. In January 2007 PBS aired pilot episodes for three different science programs, including Wired Science. Using Nielsen ratings, CPB-sponsored research and public feedback, PBS...
interview with the artist was featured on the Yahoo homepage on September 29, controversy erupted in both the scientific and religious communities, and interest in the Atheon gained traction worldwide.
A Synod
Synod
A synod historically is a council of a church, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. In modern usage, the word often refers to the governing body of a particular church, whether its members are meeting or not...
was held inside the Atheon on December 4, with participants including UC Berkeley philosopher John Campbell
John Campbell (philosopher)
John Campbell is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California in Berkeley, California. Before moving to Berkeley, Campbell taught at Oxford University for a number of years, eventually holding the Wilde Professorship of Mental Philosophy...
and UC Berkeley astrophysicist Ilan Roth.
In the midst of the Atheon debate, Keats announced that he had discovered a way to play God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
, using quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...
to generate new universes. Enlisting the many worlds interpretation of physicist Hugh Everett
Hugh Everett
Hugh Everett III was an American physicist who first proposed the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, which he termed his "relative state" formulation....
, his process made use of readily-available equipment including uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...
-doped glass and scintillating crystal
Scintillator
A scintillator is a special material, which exhibits scintillation—the property of luminescence when excited by ionizing radiation. Luminescent materials, when struck by an incoming particle, absorb its energy and scintillate, i.e., reemit the absorbed energy in the form of light...
, all acquired on eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
. After building several prototypes, Keats manufactured a simple D.I.Y. kit
Kit
-Animals:* kit, a young ferret* a short form of kitten, a young cat* Kit fox, a relatively common North American fox* Kit, a group of domestic pigeons trained to perform together in competitions-Companies and organisations:...
that purported to let anyone create new universes with a mason jar
Mason jar
A Mason jar is a glass jar used in canning to preserve food. They were invented and patented by John Landis Mason, a Philadelphia tinsmith in 1858. They are also called Ball jars, after Ball Corp., a popular and early manufacturer of the jars; fruit jars because they are often used to store...
, a drinking straw
Drinking straw
A drinking straw is a short tube intended for transferring a beverage from its container to the mouth of the drinker by use of suction. A thin tube of plastic or other material, straight or with an accordion-like living hinge, it is employed by being held with one end in the mouth and another end...
, and a piece of chewing gum
Chewing gum
Chewing gum is a type of gum traditionally made of chicle, a natural latex product, or synthetic rubber known as polyisobutylene. For economical and quality reasons, many modern chewing gums use rubber instead of chicle...
, a gadget much commented upon in the media and widely popular in the blogosphere. In an exhibition at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco, Keats sold the kits for $20 apiece, and also presented plans, simultaneously submitted to the United States Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
, for a much larger factory
Factory
A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where laborers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production...
, which would generate new universes from the nuclear waste slated to be buried in the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in the next decade. His proposal has proven controversial.
In early 2009, Keats was an artist-in-residence at Montana State University
Montana State University - Bozeman
Montana State University – Bozeman is a public university located in Bozeman, Montana. It is the state's land-grant university and primary campus in the Montana State University System, which is part of the Montana University System...
in Bozeman, where he opened the world's second porn theater for house plants, based on the porn theater he opened in Chico, CA in 2007, but in this case catering to an audience of local zinnias. He also composed a song to be performed by Mandeville Creek on the MSU campus, orchestrated by rearranging rocks melodically, using the musical structure of the medieval rondeau
Rondeau (music)
The rondeau was a Medieval and early Renaissance musical form, based on the contemporary popular poetic rondeau form. It is distinct from the 18th century rondo, though the terms are likely related...
. In June, Keats created "The Longest Story Ever Told," a 9 word story printed on the cover of the eighth issue of Opium Magazine
Opium Magazine
Opium is a journal featuring fiction, comics, poetry and humor. Founded by Todd Zuniga, Opium Magazine first appeared online in 2001 and in print in 2005. Opium Magazine features many notable writers and artists including Etgar Keret, Aimee Bender, Tao Lin, David Gaffney, Davis Schneiderman,...
, "The Infinity Issue." The story is printed in a double layer of black ink, with the second layer screened to make each successive word fractionally less vulnerable to ultraviolet radiation. When exposed to sunlight, words will appear at a rate of one per century over the next one thousand years, an effort deemed one of the seven best magazine tech innovations by Tech Radar and called Joycean
Joycean
A text is deemed Joycean when it is reminiscent of the writings of James Joyce, particularly Ulysses or Finnegans Wake. Joycean fiction exhibits a high degree of verbal play, usually within the framework of stream of consciousness. Works that are "Joycean" may also be technically eclectic,...
by NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, but judged to be "about as practical as a shark in formaldehyde" by the Independent (UK). Keats attempted to counteract the global recession
Global recession
A global recession is a period of global economic slowdown. The International Monetary Fund takes many factors into account when defining a global recession, but it states that global economic growth of 3 percent or less is "equivalent to a global recession".By this measure, four periods since...
in November by introducing a mirror economy backed by antimatter. In order to implement his idea, Keats opened an "anti-bank" which issued paper currency in units of 10,000 positrons and higher. Featured on Good Magazine
GOOD Magazine
Good is a media platform that promotes, connects, and reports on the individuals, businesses, and non-profits "moving the world forward." Good produces a , a quarterly magazine, and online video content covering a variety of topics, including the environment, education, urban planning, design,...
's annual Good 100 list, Keats's First Bank of Antimatter was championed by New Scientist
New Scientist
New Scientist is a weekly non-peer-reviewed English-language international science magazine, which since 1996 has also run a website, covering recent developments in science and technology for a general audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of...
as "a true attempt to make something out of nothing" and lambasted by The Discovery Channel as "the epitome of caveat emptor
Caveat emptor
Caveat emptor is Latin for "Let the buyer beware". Generally, caveat emptor is the property law doctrine that controls the sale of real property after the date of closing.- Explanation :...
".
Keats introduced four new projects in 2010. In January he created a pinhole camera
Pinhole camera
A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens and with a single small aperture – effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box...
intended to take a single 100-year-long exposure. Printed in Good Magazine
GOOD Magazine
Good is a media platform that promotes, connects, and reports on the individuals, businesses, and non-profits "moving the world forward." Good produces a , a quarterly magazine, and online video content covering a variety of topics, including the environment, education, urban planning, design,...
, the simple box camera
Box camera
The box camera is, with the exception of the pin hole camera, a camera in its simplest form. The form of the classic box camera is no more than a cardboard or plastic box with a lens in one end and film at the other. A simple box camera has only a single element meniscus fixed focus lens and...
was designed to be cut out, folded, and glued together, and then left to take a picture which the magazine promised to publish in a "special folio" as part of the January 2110 issue. In February, Keats expanded his filmmaking for plants into a new genre. Observing that plants aren't mobile, he produced a travel documentary
Travel documentary
A travel documentary is a documentary film or television program that describes travel in general or tourist attractions in a non-commercial way....
- showing footage of Italian skies - which he screened for an audience of ficus
Ficus
Ficus is a genus of about 850 species of woody trees, shrubs, vines, epiphytes, and hemiepiphyte in the family Moraceae. Collectively known as fig trees or figs, they are native throughout the tropics with a few species extending into the semi-warm temperate zone. The Common Fig Ficus is a genus of...
and palm trees at the AC Institute in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
through early March, and later in the year presented to an audience of mixed species, with musical accompaniment by the composer Theresa Wong, at the Berkeley Art Museum in California. He also produced an online version of the movie for viewing by plants at home, posted by Wired News
Wired News
Wired News is an online technology news website, formerly known as HotWired, that split off from Wired magazine when the magazine was purchased by Condé Nast Publishing in the 1990s. Wired News was owned by Lycos not long after the split, until Condé Nast purchased Wired News on July 11, 2006...
Following an AFP
Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse is a French news agency, the oldest one in the world, and one of the three largest with Associated Press and Reuters. It is also the largest French news agency. Currently, its CEO is Emmanuel Hoog and its news director Philippe Massonnet...
wire story, news of the travel documentaries was reported worldwide, though not in Italy. Keats launched an alternative space agency, the Local Air and Space Administration (LASA), in October. Headquartered at California State University, Chico
California State University, Chico
California State University, Chico is the second-oldest campus in the twenty-three-campus California State University system. It is located in Chico, California, about ninety miles north of Sacramento...
, the organization claimed to be taking on the exploratory role abandoned by NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
, and announced simultaneous missions to the Moon
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
and Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
. Rather than building rockets, LASA amassed lunar and martian terrain locally in California, by pulverizing meteorites. The first LASA astronauts were potatoes grown in water mineralized with lunar anorthosite
Anorthosite
Anorthosite is a phaneritic, intrusive igneous rock characterized by a predominance of plagioclase feldspar , and a minimal mafic component...
and martian shergottite, exploring the Moon and Mars by osmosis
Osmosis
Osmosis is the movement of solvent molecules through a selectively permeable membrane into a region of higher solute concentration, aiming to equalize the solute concentrations on the two sides...
, according to Keats, who further argued that the minerals they absorbed over their month-long missions made them "alien
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
hybrids". LASA also entered the space tourism
Space tourism
Space Tourism is space travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. A number of startup companies have sprung up in recent years, hoping to create a space tourism industry...
business, offering humans the opportunity to explore the Moon and Mars by buying and drinking bottled lunar and martian mineral waters at an "exotourism bureau" in San Francisco. At the same time that he was managing the Local Air & Space Administration, Keats started independently to produce pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
for God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
. The source for his pornography was the Large Hadron Collider
Large Hadron Collider
The Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It is expected to address some of the most fundamental questions of physics, advancing the understanding of the deepest laws of nature....
(LHC) which had just begun to replicate Big Bang
Big Bang
The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in...
conditions at a small scale. Reasoning that the Big Bang was "divine coitus", Keats screened a live feed from the LHC on a votive altar
Altar
An altar is any structure upon which offerings such as sacrifices are made for religious purposes. Altars are usually found at shrines, and they can be located in temples, churches and other places of worship...
. He opened his "porn palace for God" at the alternative art space Louis V. ESP in Brooklyn, New York. While Keats explained that he had become "God's pornographer" in order to encourage God to create additional universes since our own was doomed by cosmic expansion, worldwide opinion on the worthiness of his project was mixed.
Related work
Keats is also the art criticCritic
A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...
for San Francisco
San Francisco (magazine)
San Francisco is an American monthly magazine devoted to San Francisco Bay Area culture, including arts, food, and entertainment. It is published monthly by publications.-History:...
magazine, and writes about art for publications including Art & Antiques, Art in America
Art in America
Art in America is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It is designed for collectors, artists, dealers, art professionals and other...
, Art + Auction, ArtNews
ARTnews
ARTnews is an arts magazine based in New York, founded by James Clarence Hyde in 1902 as Hyde’s Weekly Art News. It is published 11 times a year.ARTnews covers all art, from ancient to Post-modernism...
, and Artweek. He is also a book critic and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, and his reporting for Popular Science
Popular Science
Popular Science is an American monthly magazine founded in 1872 carrying articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects. Popular Science has won over 58 awards, including the ASME awards for its journalistic excellence in both 2003 and 2004...
has been included in The Best American Science Writing
The Best American Science Writing
The Best American Science Writing is a yearly anthology of popular science magazine articles published in the United States. It was started in 2000 and published by Harper Perennial...
2007. He is a writer and commentator on new language, the Jargon Watch columnist for Wired Magazine the author of a devil's dictionary of technology, and a book of essays, "Virtual Words: Language on the Edge of Science and Technology", which Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
published in October 2010.
Each chapter examines the co-evolution of language and society in terms of a novel word, such as exopolitics and in vitro meat
In vitro meat
In vitro meat, also known as cultured meat, is an animal flesh product that has never been part of a complete, living animal.This form of meat has been described, sometimes derisively, as "laboratory-grown" meat. In vitro meat should not be confused with imitation meat, which is a vegetarian food...
. Keats is a fiction writer as well, the author of two novels, The Pathology of Lies, published in English by Warner Books, and Lighter Than Vanity, published exclusively in Russian by Eksmo. The Book of the Unknown, a collection of fables loosely based on Talmudic legend, was published by Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
in February 2009 and awarded the Sophie Brody Medal by the American Library Association
American Library Association
The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....
in 2010. While the stories are said by Kirkus to have "echoes of Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer – July 24, 1991) was a Polish Jewish American author noted for his short stories. He was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978...
, Sholom Aleichem
Sholom Aleichem
Sholem Aleichem was the pen name of Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, a leading Yiddish author and playwright...
and S.Y. Agnon", Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
compares them to The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride is a 1973 fantasy novel written by William Goldman. It was originally published in the United States by Harcourt Brace, while in the UK it is/was published by Bloomsbury Publishing....
("without the gloss"). Since publication, the most persistent question has been whether the author Jonathon Keats is the same person as the conceptual artist. (A reviewer for the New York Observer
New York Observer
The New York Observer is a weekly newspaper first published in New York City on September 22, 1987, by Arthur L. Carter, a very successful former investment banker with publishing interests. The Observer focuses on the city's culture, real estate, the media, politics and the entertainment and...
even deconstructed his Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
entry.) However Keats has assured interviewers that the writer and artist are the same person, telling Salon that his fables, like his art, are a form of thought experiment.
External links
- New Yorker Magazine brief profile
- Good Magazine profile
- Space.com interview
- Salon.com interview
- Outside Magazine profile
- KQED-TV/PBS short documentary
- Judah L. Magnes Museum documentary
- SF Weekly profile
- Jonathon Keats at Modernism Gallery
- An interview with Jonathon Keats on The Marketplace of Ideas