Strings, real estate and 4D house designs
March 8th, 2007
I knew string theory will pay off some time!
For many people, the cost of real estate is so high it might as well be in another dimension. But Oscar Villalon and Mary Ladd just found a place they can afford. They’re part of a great speculative land grab going on in San Francisco. Properties are going up for sale in the low single digits, only to be flipped and resold at a profit. But before you get out your checkbook you should know that these are properties in the so called higher dimensions ? dimensions of space, which, according to string theory exist, but are hard to imagine, let alone get into. Nonetheless, an artist is doing brisk business selling higher-dimension real estate in a project called “Speculations.”
In the gallery Jonathon Keats hung these stings from the ceiling. It’s supposed to be a model of the 4 dimensional house he designed - but mostly they just tangled people up. Which is a sly physical pun - Keats hopes to entagle visitors in his ideas - and hopes that as they extract
themselves from his snares they’ll notice all the other assumptions they are tangled up in.
Within the first three hours, 32 buyers ranging from art dealers and curators to business executives and lawyers plunked down a total of $410.51 for 172 extra dimenstion lots. That represents a return of nearly seven times the $63.06 Keats spent to acquire the rights.
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