For Immediate Release
String Theory Breakthrough
Launches New Real Estate Boom
Conceptual Artist Discovers
Undeveloped Acreage Through Latest Particle Physics... Plans to Sell Prime Bay Area Properties
for Under Ten Dollars... Exclusive Public Offering at Modernism Gallery....
NOVEMBER 5, 2006 - 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."