CHRISTOPH KELLER Christoph Keller, Introduction | Page 42

SMALL SURVEY ON NOTHINGNESS, SCHERING STIFTUNG, BERLIN, 2014
In Small Survey on Nothingness, Christoph Keller investigated the relationship of nothingness to
the ambivalent medium of ether in the context of art and science. While ether has been investigated
by scientists as a medium for the transmission of light since the late seventeenth century, in philoso-
phy it represents the absence of absence – that is, the impossibility to think nothingness or absolute
emptiness.
In 1881, Albert A. Michelson made his first experiment at the Astrophysical Observatory in Potsdam
to prove the existence of light-ether; the experiment, however, “failed”, thus laying one of the foun-
dations for the development of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Exposed as a scientific fallacy, ether
was banished from scientific research at the same time that the substance and its properties were
discovered by the artistic avantgarde.
In two video productions and an open experiment for visitors, Christoph Keller explored the traces of
nothingness and ether, from Michelson’s experimentum crucis to the discovery of the Higgs boson
at CERN.
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