Jonathon Keats
Extraterrestrial Aesthetics, Divine Genetics, and Other Thought Experiments
Date 10/27/06
Affiliation Artist, San Francisco
Abstract
Is art a science? Is science an art? In contemporary artistic practice, the studio may be a genetics laboratory, while the theoretical physicist, working years ahead of any plausible experiment, often formulates reality according to mathematical aesthetics. Have these two disciplines lost their bearings in the widening wake of postmodernism? Are we seeing just another breed of mash-up? Or do art and science need one another if either is to remain meaningful in the 21st Century?
Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats will address these questions by describing the role of scientific research in his creative process. He will discuss his attempts to genetically engineer God in a petri dish and to facilitate the intergalactic exchange of art, as well as his efforts to customize the metric system and to apply string theory to real estate development. Thinking of his projects as 'thought experiments', which rigorously misapply practices borrowed from biology, chemistry, and physics (as well as law and economics), Keats strives to take up where natural philosophy left off -- and to enlist others in his interdisciplinary investigation.
Bio
Jonathon Keats is an artist, critic, and novelist. His art projects have been presented at venues including the Judah L. Magnes Museum, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the Exploratorium, as well as galleries including Refusalon and Modernism, which currently represents him -- and have been documented by KQED-TV and the BBC World Service, as well as in periodicals ranging from The San Francisco Chronicle to the Boston Globe to New Scientist. Keats also serves as the art critic for San Francisco Magazine and as a columnist for both Artweek and Wired Magazine. He is the author of two novels, as well as museum catalogue essays and monographs. He has lectured in spaces ranging from the UC San Francisco Department of Neurology to the Happy Ending Bar in New York City, and has been awarded fellowships by Yaddo, the Ucross Foundation, the MacNamara Foundation, the University of Arizona, and the MacDowell Colony.
-- As of 10/27/06
Updated Bio
Jonathon Keats is an artist, critic, and novelist. His conceptual art projects have been presented at venues including the Judah L. Magnes Museum, the Exploratorium, and the San Francisco Arts Commission, and as well as galleries including Refusalon and Modernism -- which currently represents him -- and have been documented by PBS and the BBC World Service, garnering favorable attention in periodicals ranging from The San Francisco Chronicle and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, to Nature and New Scientist, to Flash Art and Net Art News. Additionally, Keats serves as the art critic for San Francisco Magazine and as a columnist for both Artweek and Wired Magazine. He is the author of two novels, as well as museum catalogue essays and monographs. Since graduating summa cum laude from Amherst College in 1994, he has been a visiting artist at California State University, Chico, and a guest lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as the recipient of Yaddo and MacDowell fellowships.
-- As of 2/13/07