Roman Keller

Abstract

My time as artist-in-lab at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) began with a meeting at the Institute’s Villigen HQ, where I was introduced to Beat Gerber, Head of Public Relations, and Fritz Gassmann, a physicist in the Energy Research Department. It was decided that I should present my ideas in a talk to that department two days later. My presentation — in which I focused on the ten day construction phase preparatory to an exhibition in the Kunsthalle Fribourg — was well received. I started out on my image research and gradually began to make contact with individual scientists. I did not have to wait long for the first disappointment: the PSI library had very little pictorial material connected with alternative energy sources — intensive research in this area only began at PSI towards the end of the 80s. But I did find (in the glossary of a six volume Encyclopaedia of Energy) a summary of the energy history of our planet, and this became the foundation for a new book project. My focus moved increasingly away from the original project submission, which was to produce the ‘visual consequences’ of alternative energy research, and I became engrossed in the idea of pursuing research of my own.