The ribbon was named after the Leipzig mathematician and astronomer August Ferdinand Möbius, whose name thus went down in history. His colleague, the mathematician Johann Benedict Listing from Göttingen, can now only be found in the archives.

Mathematically speaking, the Möbius strip is a “non-orientable manifold.” Top becomes bottom, outside becomes inside, beginning becomes end. In this respect, it not only challenges the established categories of our perception, but also calls them into question. It challenges us to allow new perspectives and to recognize that boundaries are often illusions.

Due to its unique shape, it has become a symbol of what we call infinity. But what is infinity, and what does it mean? Even if we cannot answer this question, the Möbius strip at least offers us the opportunity to realize that there are realities to which the supposed law of nature, that everything must have a beginning and an end, does not apply.

If this exists on a small scale, why not on a large scale?

This exciting question has always preoccupied OUBEY. And when we discussed it, sooner or later we came to the unanimous conclusion that we favor the idea of infinity, even if we ultimately do not understand it and, of course, cannot prove it.

Since its discovery, the Möbius strip has left its own unique mark as a silent mirror of human experience of the world. Numerous references can be found in films, novels, paintings, and scientific theories.

I would like to briefly present two examples that were particularly interesting and significant for OUBEY.

And now, for a brief moment, the Möbius loop also appears in a spark of the cosmic space in the OUBEY MINDSPACE when it comes to the phenomenon of time – as a symbol of infinity.

 

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There are six rooms in the OUBEY MINDSPACE. Each of them contains five different Mind Sparks, which in turn contain various impulses. Behind every Spark and every impulse is a story about OUBEY and what interested and inspired him. I will tell these stories here.

At this point, I would like to thank the Kubikfoto³ team for the design of the OUBEY MINDSPACE, which has already won three prestigious international design awards – most recently the Red Dot Award 2025.

Effortlessly, masterfully, and radically, he moved across musical genres, resisting the normative force of the mainstream more stubbornly than perhaps any other musician and composer of the 20th century.

Shaped by Stravinsky, Puccini, Webern, and Varèse, his musical output remains a unique convergence of avant-garde, classical music, rock, jazz, and electronic sound. Whether one likes his work or not, this alone makes him a rarity — and a stroke of luck. Kent Nagano conducted Zappa’s orchestral works; Pierre Boulez attended a Zappa concert in Paris in 1980 Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger – Wikipedia, which led to a fruitful collaboration. In Europe, Zappa’s compositions found appreciation and recognition unmatched anywhere else, least of all in the United States.

Zappa not only dissolved boundaries between musical styles, he also violated the behavioural codes of a society that preferred the façade of truth to truth itself. In the 1960s and 70s, his fiercely independent spirit unsettled the puritan-influenced social fabric of the United States. It brought him trouble from many sides, yet never stopped him from following his own uncompromising path.

Frank Zappa could be razor-sharp and humorous at the same time — witty, profound, blunt, satirical, political, courageous.
Free in spirit, inventive in composition, and strict with his band while on tour. Admired by some, despised by others, often triggering tumult during concerts — concerts he sometimes ended prematurely or finished with his back turned to the audience.

A notorious chapter in pop history is the 1971 incident at the Montreux Rainbow Theatre, when an audience member threw a flare onto the stage, igniting a fire that destroyed not only the hall but the entire theatre. Deep Purple immortalized the event in their song Smoke on the Water

OUBEY’s fascination with Zappa and his music began in the mid-1970s, when he first heard the album One Size Fits All. A concert by Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in Cologne at the end of the decade was the first major live concert he had ever attended. That Zappa arrived in a limousine seemed odd but acceptable. That he played the concert rather “unfriendly” due to bottle-throwing from the audience was, however, a sobering experience. For a while, other composers and musicians moved to the foreground.

Screenshot from The MIND SPARK “Music – Frank Zappa”

When The Yellow Shark The Yellow Shark – Album von Frank Zappa | Spotify  was released in 1993, his interest resurfaced and matured into a deep appreciation for the work’s complexity, originality, and brilliant live performance with Ensemble Modern. It was the same Zappa — and yet not the same he had seen live at 18. When he learned of Zappa’s early death shortly afterwards, he revisited the discography and rediscovered him all over again.

I vividly remember an afternoon when a fascinating spectacle of sound filled the room — played loudly through the magnificent B&W speakers with tweeters and subwoofer. OUBEY had chosen the speakers and the system after extensive research and countless tests, connecting them with a high-end power cable. Sound quality mattered to him deeply. Years earlier, he had equipped his studio with excellent T&A speakers that remain there to this day.

I listened carefully. I did not recognize the music. It was The Yellow Shark. Until then, OUBEY had only played it in the studio. I asked him what this wonderful music was. “That’s Zappa?” I exclaimed in surprise. It was fantastic. I myself had gone through an earlier Zappa phase — long before I knew OUBEY — with Camarillo Brillo and 200 Motels. From then on, we appreciated him together.

On November 4, 2005, Ensemble Modern — which had collaborated closely with Zappa in his final years and had already performed and recorded The Yellow Shark live under his direction — played the “Shark” at the Konzerthaus Baden-Baden. It was an unforgettable, magnificent concert.

 

Screenshot from the MIND SPARK “Music – Frank Zappa”

Nearly twenty years later, when the question arose which musicians and which original works should appear in the OUBEY MINDSPACE, it was clear to me that Frank Zappa had to be included — ideally with a track from The Yellow Shark. This choice was about both his music and his unwavering commitment to artistic creativity.

To use the music, I needed an author’s licence. I could only obtain it from Zappa’s family, who have preserved his musical legacy since his death. To my delight, the licence was granted without difficulty, and I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the Zappa family.

The MindSpark, in which we now hear a one-minute excerpt from “Uncle Meat” from The Yellow Shark is, for me, not only a musical highlight but — through the previously unpublished painting from OUBEY’s computer-art series Zosch and Zorro — also a visual one within this room of the OUBEY MINDSPACE.

“ZZZ” – OUBEY Computer Art

Through the integrated Frank Zappa quote, it also reflects OUBEY’s own view of the relationship between art and the market: “I think that any artistic decision that is based on whether or not you are going to make money is not really an artistic decision. It’s a business decision.”

To anyone who wants to learn something genuine about Frank Zappa, I highly recommend Thorsten Schütte’s documentary Eat That Question – Frank Zappa In His Own Words .

 

The OUBEY MINDSPACE consists of six rooms. Each contains five different Mind Sparks, each offering impulses of its own. Behind every Spark and every impulse lies a story that tells us more about who OUBEY was — and how he was. These stories are told here by me.

My thanks go to the team of Kubikfoto³ for the outstanding design of the OUBEY MINDSPACE, which has already received three prestigious international design awards — most recently the Red Dot Award 2025.

It takes material form and shape in an external space — that is where it comes into the world.

This space can be a studio. For OUBEY, however, during the early years of his creative work, it was always the apartment in which he happened to be living. When we moved into our first shared home, a beautiful old apartment, the largest and brightest room became his first true studio.

Even before that, in his tiny apartment on Brunnenstraße, he had created magnificent paintings in very limited space — such as The Journey of the Monads, Green Painting, and Morphogenesis. It was there that he showed them to me for the first time. I was deeply impressed.

An explosion of creative energy occurred in his first real studio, in our apartment on Roonstraße. It was as though countless paintings had already been waiting inside him to finally see the light of day: Einstein’s Tears, Zero Field, Samurai, the triptych 27 Cube Memory System, and many more were created there between 1984 and 1987.

The move to his first studio outside our home gave his creativity yet another boost. Markus Lüpertz and Uwe Lindau had worked there before him. The landlady, an older, widowed, and very determined lady, liked to tell stories about her experiences with OUBEY’s “predecessors.” Lüpertz, she said, once wanted to give her one of his paintings — but it hadn’t looked like art to her, more like the suits in the window display of Karlsruhe’s largest men’s clothing store. So she had refused it.

In this studio on Sofienstraße, OUBEY began working with the Amiga 500 computer. That’s why an original photo of this studio — showing the “digital studio” — appears in the Spark section of the OUBEY MINDSPACE, which explores art and computer technology. There you’ll also find a quote by OUBEY on the relationship between art and computers — a statement whose fundamental insight reaches far beyond its time and remains just as valid and significant in 2025 as it was then.

With the PhotonPaintings he created on the Amiga 500, he held his first and only, very successful exhibition in 1992, titled MINDKISS – The PHOTONPAINTING. I later named the MINDKISS project after this exhibition in 2005. In case you wonder why the catalogue cover names a Wendelin Koehler as presenting artist, you will find the answer at the same Spark as mentioned above.

In this studio, OUBEY also painted with oil on canvas for the first time. However, he found that this technique was unsuitable for realizing the images that already existed in his mind, as he put it. Even computer work reached its limits of materialization — enlarging the image files to formats of adequate size was enormously complex and unaffordable.

OUBEY dreamed of one day printing them with a plotter on enormous canvases, or projecting them onto large white walls or waterfalls using laser technology—early ideas for an immersive 360° presentation of his art. This is just one example of how far ahead of his time he was in his imagination. But at that time, for an artist with limited financial means, that dream was still far out of reach. Today, when we publicly present his great late work GENESIS as an immersive 360° room projection, we are following in the footsteps of his thoughts.

Then he was given notice to vacate the studio. It was a hard blow. He knew how difficult it would be to find another suitable — or even halfway decent — space. As I had done in 1987, I searched tirelessly for a new studio for him. And once again, after months of searching, I was lucky enough to find a good one — larger, brighter, closer to our home, and affordable. When I told OUBEY about it, he had serious doubts. But the moment he entered it for the first time, it was immediately clear that this was his space. What a stroke of luck!

Take your time for the experience of a virtual 360° visit at OUBEYs studio.

It took quite a while before he had set up this new studio in a way that made him feel comfortable — something that was an absolute prerequisite for his painting. There was a couch, a large satellite TV, a small open kitchen, a bathroom, a big bed, and a lemon tree I had given him as a housewarming gift.

Then, in 2003, came the next explosion of creativity: large-format paintings, oil on coated fiberboard — GENESIS and StarPixelClusters. I had never before seen OUBEY so consistently and continuously productive. He was completely at one with himself. And for the first time after twelve years of withdrawal, he was ready for another exhibition.

I still remember vividly how, after his fatal accident, I entered the studio alone for the first time in August 2004 — with the greatest respect, knowing that I would never have entered it without OUBEYs presence while he was alive. Because that was his space — his most personal realm of freedom. Yet the lemon tree needed water. Every three or four days.

And so, in time, OUBEYs studio became our space.

 

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There are six rooms in the OUBEY MINDSPACE. Each of them contains five different Mind Sparks, which in turn contain various impulses. Behind every Spark and every impulse is a story that tells us more about who OUBEY was and what he was like. I will tell these stories here.

Many thanks to the great team at Kubikfoto for their fantastic co-creation and their outstanding performance by the audiovisual production of the OUBEY MINDSPACE. Together we are delighted that the achievement of the OUBEY MINDSPACE has been awarded with three international awards, including the prestigous Red Dot Design Award 2025.

 

Not a temporary stay in an ISS research station, but a permanent relocation? Perhaps the question should be rephrased: When will humans first relocate to space?

OUBEY already spoke in 1992 about how the rapid increase in the human population on Earth is at the expense of all other living beings on this planet. And that humanity should leave Earth and move to space – in the long term.

The idea that we humans could approach space, where our Earth floats and revolves around the sun once a year, travel there or even live there for a certain period of time, has been around for a very long time. Fantastic science fiction stories, but also scientific studies, have repeatedly encouraged us not to dismiss this idea as fantasy, but to believe in its feasibility.

Manned space flight has shown us how it is possible to overcome gravity, leave the Earth’s atmosphere, and venture into the space of our solar system. Scientific projects have repeatedly investigated what it might look like to settle humans in a space colony. Based on the findings of an MIT study, a project was launched at the University of Karlsruhe in 1979 under the direction of Prof. Fritz Haller, which dealt with the “environmental design of prototypical space colonies.”

The aim was to design a “space colony” for 1,000 inhabitants, which would serve as their permanent home, workplace, and living space. Not a stationary base on another planet such as Mars, but an “orbital,” a huge spacecraft floating freely in space, in which 1,000 people would find an artificially created home. This presents not only a technical challenge, but also a challenge in terms of designing the social space and the social framework for coexistence on this island in space.

When they are substantial, such designs therefore always border on social utopias, the realization of which is likely to be far more probable over the next fifty to a hundred years than many people would like to believe today.

It was precisely at this time that OUBEY began studying architecture at the University of Karlsruhe. Meeting Fritz Haller and learning about the visionary projects he and his students were working on was a stroke of luck for OUBEY, with far-reaching consequences. He was inspired and enthusiastic about Haller’s project assignments, but above all by the free-spirited nature of his personality. OUBEY approached the task of designing a new type of folding chair by focusing not on the design of the chair itself, but on the mathematics of the joint. The result was what OUBEY called the rotation vector. Haller did not criticize him for this, but on the contrary found it highly interesting and suggested that OUBEY should continue working on it. However, he then decided to pursue the freedom of art. Nevertheless, OUBEY was never able to forget his encounter with Haller and his visionary projects.

The colonization of space is not only a historic challenge from a technical, architectural, and social-psychological point of view. It will be a test of the intelligence of the human species and its ability to actually learn from the experiences of its own history. Whether we are capable of doing so or whether we will instead export our outdated, destructive patterns of thought and action into space remains to be seen. Doubts about this seem justified.

However, cooperation between human and artificial intelligence could prove to be a unique historical opportunity and become a decisive success factor in this pioneering achievement. I would love to know how OUBEY would assess this today.

In the MINDSPACE Spark on the topic of “space colonies,” we learn why he was already convinced in 1992 that humans should move to space – and he tells us this in his original, recorded voice.

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There are six rooms in the OUBEY MINDSPACE. Each of them contains five different Mind Sparks, which in turn contain various impulses. Behind every Spark and every impulse is a story that tells us more about who OUBEY was and what he was like. I will tell these stories here.

Many thanks to the great team at Kubikfoto for their fantastic co-creation and their outstanding performance by the audiovisual production of the OUBEY MINDSPACE. Together we are delighted that the achievement of the OUBEY MINDSPACE has been awarded with three international awards, including the prestigous Red Dot Design Award 2025.

 

 

 

The 31st Speyer Kulturbeutel Festival will then raise the curtain in the Old Town Hall on October 4. Preparations are already underway.

Between the afternoon and evening performances, Dagmar Woyde-Koehler presented her project “Mindkiss” to Kulturbeutel visitors. With this extraordinary interactive exhibition, she brings the Karlsruhe artist Rudi Wendelin-Koehler, alias Oubey, who died in an accident in 2004, back to life. The virtual journey of discovery into the artist’s different thought spaces is particularly emotional when Oubey’s original voice can be heard. Even though it is recreated by AI, it still has a strange sound for his widow, especially since it is deceptively real, as she says.

A space of thought by Oubey.

Woyde-Köhler lived with Oubey for 21 years and has made it her mission to share his legacy with the world. The exhibition offers a glimpse into an uncertain future and insights into the past as Obey saw it. It tells of the cosmos and the beauty of the underwater worlds and of the 1000 stars that the artist wanted to create. Almost all of them shine brightly at the viewer between two toiletries bags.

Ellen Korelus-Bruder in DIE RHEINPFALZ, October 13, 2025 (excerpt)

The artist’s name is OUBEY. And the question of the sources of his inspiration is answered by a virtual experience space: the OUBEY MINDSPACE. In an interactive, playful way, visitors can discover what inspired and excited this artist—from astrophysics, space travel, and science fiction to philosophy, evolutionary history, and poetry to music, film art, and the world of comics. Through immersive narratives, visual content, and personal insights, visitors can get to know OUBEY’s world of ideas and understand the interdisciplinary connections that are expressed in his art.

The experiential journey takes place on two monitors—a large screen on which thoughts come to life in colorful images, accompanied by soundscapes, pieces of music, and sounds. And a touchscreen in front of it, where everyone can freely choose which of the six atmospherically completely different rooms they would like to visit first. Once in one of the rooms, further worlds open up, which can be accessed by clicking on a point. There are also artifacts from the artist’s everyday life and some background stories are told.

The artifacts can be found by clicking on small hidden Polaroid photos. Once all twelve have been found, a link to an OUBEY MINDSPACE playlist on Spotify opens. It contains all the music tracks from MINDSPACE in full length, as well as many other tracks by musicians, composers, and singers who were of special significance to OUBEY.

This is the first time I have presented OUBEY MINDSPACE to the public in this way. Since its premiere at the ZKM Karlsruhe in March, it has been available to people all over the world free of charge on the internet. More than a million people have visited it online since then. Now, for the first time, I can experience the immediate response of other people to this innovative form of presentation. For me, this is just as intense an experience as visiting OUBEY MINDSPACE is for guests.

“For us, it was an adventure to digitally reinvent OUBEYs world,” said Ole Leifels from Kubikfoto³, the team that worked with me for two years to design and then produce OUBEY MINDSPACE. Incidentally, they were recently awarded the coveted Red Dot Design Award for this. He added: “The MINDSPACE shows that technology doesn’t have to be cold. It can be moving, arouse curiosity, and build bridges between art, science, and the public.” All guests of the Kulturbeutel who have visited the OUBEY MINDSPACE have confirmed that this is the case.

This year, the Kulturbeutel Festival in Speyer’s Old Town Hall is offering its guests the OUBEY MINDSPACE as a surprise outside the official program. This unique experience space is hidden behind a black curtain at the entrance to the theater. Anyone can visit it every day between 5:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., and admission is free.

The OUBEY MINDSPACE’s guest appearance in Speyer ends on Sunday, October 12, at 7:30 p.m.

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WOCHENBLATT SPEYER, October 6, 2025

 

It was leaning against the wall of his tiny apartment and exerted an irresistible attraction on me from the very first moment.

OUBEY told me the title was “The Journey of the Monads” and explained that monads are the smallest, animated, self-moving, indivisible particles in the universe, both spirit and matter at the same time. Although physically separate, they are all forever connected to each other through communication. He was fascinated by this metaphysical understanding of the universe and the creative genius of the mind that produced it.

Then he talked about Newton and criticized the limitations of his mechanical view of the world, which implied that everything was reversible. Fortunately, Einstein had corrected this by classifying Newtonian mechanics. Natural processes are irreversible. Recognizing this makes a decisive difference in understanding the world and its dynamic complexity. Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigogine, whose groundbreaking book “Dialogue with Nature” he had just read, would agree.

Leibniz, Newton, Einstein, Prigogine – a fast-paced, impressive lecture, delivered off the cuff on a sunny afternoon! When OUBEY shared the intellectual context of his thinking and work with me, and often with others, those were magical moments – usually in the truest sense of the word.

It was not Leibniz, but his rival contemporary Isaac Newton who achieved fame and fortune during his lifetime. This fact reinforced OUBEY’s critical assessment of public perception when it comes to the question of adapting to the spirit of the times and the respective power relations.

Unlike Newton, Leibniz was not particularly adept at making a personal impression on the wealthy patrons of his time that would have brought him fame and fortune. Busy day and night with his ideas, studies, experiments, and writings, he was not a man of the public. Nevertheless, he gained recognition and admiration in his time, but only a few recognized and understood him for what he really was: a universal genius.

For all these reasons and more, it was clear to me that there had to be a place for Leibniz and his monadology in the OUBEY MINDSPACE.

Interestingly, in the same year that OUBEY MINDSPACE celebrated its premiere, a film was released in cinemas that brings us closer to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz as a thinker and as a human being. “Leibniz – Chronicle of an Unfinished Picture” is the title of this film by Edgar Reitz.

The film is challenging. That’s a good thing. Skillfully staged in the style of a chamber play, it provides insight into Leibniz’s relationship to art and truth while focusing on the creation of a portrait painting of Leibniz.

The commissioned established court painter, embodying the zeitgeist of the early 18th century, wants Leibniz to allow himself to be portrayed as he imagines him. Despite sincere efforts to please the artist, he does not succeed. The attempt fails. “You are no friend of art,” says the painter. “But the best friend of truth,” replies the model.

The court painter is replaced by a young artist, still unknown, disguised as a man. She is concerned with the truth in the picture. She first looks for the right light in the room, wanting to bring Leibniz’s essence to life in the picture. With her statement, “What I don’t understand, I can paint,” she leaves him, who tries to understand everything, speechless with amazement for a moment.

“The reason for art is art itself,” the film has Leibniz say. A principle that OUBEY has always followed in his artistic work.

OUBEY would have paid close attention to Edgar Reitz’s film. On the one hand, because he admired this director of the ten-part series “HEIMAT,” a true masterpiece of cinematic storytelling. On the other hand, because this outstanding director dedicated his late cinematic work to the brilliant mind with whom OUBEY felt so connected.

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There are six rooms in the OUBEY MINDSPACE. Each of them contains five different Mind Sparks, which in turn contain different impulses. Behind every Spark and every impulse is a story that tells us more about who OUBEY was and what he was like. These stories are told here by me.

In these cosmic nebula formations, of which there are countless in our universe, the exploded “dust” of dead stars collects and becomes the birthplace of new stars. Some call it cosmic recycling, others call it the nursery of the stars.

While we can only see the Eagle Nebula, 7,000 light-years away, through the eye of space telescopes, the Horsehead Nebula, due to its relative proximity to Earth, can be discovered and marveled at from here with a sufficiently powerful telescope.

In 1987, OUBEY dedicated a painting to the Horsehead Nebula which never ceases to amaze when viewed up close. Only then can you see the wafer-thin veins in the graphite-gray crackle of the dust clouds, revealing the dull shimmer of gold in the cosmic background. Above and through everything float bright red cloud formations that surround the core of the image.

The painting was created without a single brushstroke or any other manual intervention by the artist. As always, the coated hardboard panel lay horizontally on the floor during the creative process. This not only eliminated the artist’s signature, but also reduced the external influence of Earth’s gravity to a minimum. “It is important to me that my paintings are free of the artist’s signature,” said OUBEY himself. For this reason, he never signed any of the paintings from this creative period. All of his ‘painterly’ works from the 1980s were consistently created according to this principle. In “Horsehead Nebula,” he achieved a precision and depth of detail unlike any other painting.

OUBEY was not concerned with creating a replica. Photographs taken by space telescopes serve that purpose. Rather, he sought to find an artistic expression for his inner image, his vision of the Horsehead Nebula, and thus to honor this wonderful cosmic place in his own way. After all, the dust of dead stars in space not only constantly gives rise to new stars. All life on this earth, including our own species, owes its existence to this very special substance.

“This is truly cosmic art,” someone said when they saw this image. It is an expression of OUBEY’s deep connection to the cosmos, which he developed at a very young age. However, it would never have occurred to him to describe his work as “cosmic art.” Art is art. The cosmos is the cosmos.

Thus, both can be found in a Spark from the OUBEY MINDSPACE: the cosmos in the form of the Horsehead Nebula and art in the form of OUBEY’s painting of the same name.

In the early years of the MINDKISS project, when I spoke to people who knew the art world much better than I did, I found that there was a widespread belief that art had to be classifiable. Some people, quite kindly, said that a name was needed that would briefly sum up the approach or orientation of OUBEY’s work.

From a marketing perspective, this may seem plausible. However, the incredible diversity of OUBEY’s work makes such categorization impossible. This is not a problem for the MINDKISS project. On the contrary, its approach itself represents a diversity for which there is no label.

One person who immediately recognized this when encountering an original OUBEY painting and expressed it both analytically and emotionally was Prof. Peter Kruse. The video impressively shows how he approached the painting, which was completely unknown to him until then.

It was not until many years after the creation of the “Horsehead Nebula” that OUBEY returned to the theme of stars with his StarPixels. He announced in March 2004 that he would paint a thousand stars. That year, I finally gave him a telescope for Christmas. One with which he could see the Horsehead Nebula with his own eyes from the Black Forest.

They created the basis for most of today’s coal deposits. The oldest fossil finds date back to the Lower Devonian period, around 400 million years ago.

When I once had the opportunity to visit a coal mine 800 meters underground, I discovered the imprint of a fern in a piece of coal out of the corner of my eye as I crawled through a narrow seam. I was so fascinated and moved by this rare find that I picked up the piece, held it in my left hand, and continued crawling through the seam with the fossilized fern in one hand.

 

There are many artifacts from OUBEY’s everyday life on display in the OUBEY MINDSPACE. The fossilized fern, which I still cherish to this day, is not one of them, because as an artifact it is part of my own life.

But to our delight, OUBEY and I agreed one day that ferns are our favorite plants. They are simply fascinatingly beautiful: how a broad, huge frond grows out of the snail-shaped shoot, with many small seeds neatly lined up on the underside, which ensure the plant’s propagation. A masterpiece of nature!

OUBEY was also very enthusiastic about the changing aesthetics of the fern as it grew. He used the fern to explain the Fibonacci sequence to me, which the Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci discovered in various plants in the 13th century, after the ancient Greeks and Indians had already discovered the mathematical series itself – without, however, applying it to the plant world.

But what impressed him most was the fact that this plant has survived all the natural disasters of the last 400 million years and is therefore not only a fossil, for example a piece of coal, but also a living testimony to evolutionary history in the wild.

It was clear to me very early on that OUBEY MINDSPACE definitely needed a “spark” relating to evolutionary history, which would naturally also give the 400-million-year-old fern a moment of attention and respect. The image in the header shows the fern as it appears in the Mind Spark on evolution.

There are six rooms in OUBEY MINDSPACE. Each of them contains five different one-minute Mind Sparks, which in turn contain various impulses. Behind every Spark and every impulse is a story that tells us more about who OUBEY was and what he was like. These stories are told here by me.

 

 

 

When the extraordinary artist and man OUBEY was unexpectedly torn from life at a young age, a valuable treasure was left behind: his artistic work. The first approach of the MINDKISS project was to make this “hidden treasure” of his life’s work visible and to collect resonance on it.

The public interest in OUBEYs art grew, and so did the curiosity about him as a person and as a personality. For years I answered questions about him simply: “Look at his paintings. You’ll find everything that’s really important about him in his art.”

At the same time, deep inside me arose the desire to give others appropriate access to OUBEYs fascinating interdisciplinary world of knowledge and thought. Appropriate both in terms of the curiosity of the questioners and of OUBEY himself who can no longer answer their questions directly.

A classic biography was out of the question for me. Instead, I wanted to create a playful way of discovering and getting to know OUBEY in his many seemingly contradictory facets – as close and authentic as possible to his nature and his own desire to research and discover.

For years, I searched for a suitable concept. The experiments with virtual reality and AI technology in the MINDKISS project between 2019-2022 finally gave me an idea: to create an interactive experience space in which everyone can immerse themselves in OUBEYs world of thought in an entertaining and aesthetic way.

As OUBEY himself was a technical pioneer and had already created innovative computer art on the Amiga 500 in the 1980s with his PhotonPainting, I knew that he would like this approach – if only it could be implemented in a highly professional manner and meet his own high standards of what he himself described as “reference class”.

Fortunately, I found exactly the right partners at exactly the right time to realize this bold idea. When Ole Leifels and the Kubikfoto³ team agreed, the great adventure of working together creatively began. It was an intensive process of congenial design, filled with enthusiasm and the pure joy of doing.

The result is called OUBEY MINDSPACE and celebrated its premiere at the ZKM Karlsruhe on March 25, 2025. Since then, the project has already reached thousands and thousands of people worldwide via the social web. This enormous response fills me with joy – not only because of the impressive numbers but also because it has created a new, universal access to the world of OUBEY. A form of expression that does him justice in terms of both content and art and is already inspiring people of all ages.

This has always been OUBEY MINDKISS’ aspiration. For 15 years we came closer to it step by step. Now the OUBEY MINDSPACE represents a great leap forward in terms of public attention and interest – and yet it is also just the beginning. A significant part of OUBEYs work still lies hidden and is waiting to see the light of day and be discovered in the coming years.

My hope is that this growing public resonance will also generate media interest and partnerships with suitable institutions to bring OUBEYs art and the spirit that lies within it even further into the world. That would be wonderful, appropriate to the work – and certainly in keeping with its spirit.

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With many thanks to Kubikfoto³ for the congenius collaboration. The header is a screenshot of the OUBEY MINDSPACE: https://mindspace.oubey.com

 

 

On August 2, 2004, the RHEINPFALZ reported on a traffic accident on the B9 between Römerberg/Dudenhofen and Schwegenheim. A truck crashed into a small car that was parked on the hard shoulder with its hazard warning lights on. The driver of the car was the young artist Oubey, whose real name was Rudi Wendelin-Köhler from Karlsruhe. It was a shock for everyone close to him, but especially for his wife Dagmar Woyde-Köhler, who lives part of the time in Dudenhofen. Despite her bewilderment, she quickly realized: “I didn’t want to sell his artworks; fortunately, I wasn’t financially forced to do so. I wanted to continue to make his art accessible to people to the best of my knowledge and belief.”

The art collection, which Dagmar Woyde-Köhler has since carefully exhibited and managed, consists mainly of paintings. Oubey preferred to work with a mixture of pigment paints on hardboard. But he also always saw himself as a pioneer who experimented with new art forms, as Dagmar Woyde-Köhler recounts: “As early as 1987/88, he was experimenting with a drawing program on an Amiga. My husband always wanted to create multi-layered and diverse art, but never wanted it to seem arbitrary.”

Oubey enjoyed commercial success early on, selling all of his artworks at his first exhibition. A major career in the traditional art market suddenly seemed possible—and the pressure on Oubey grew: “I noticed that he was very happy about this, but it also preoccupied him. He told me that if I continued like this, I would lose the source of my art, so I advised him to take a break from exhibitions,” says Woyde-Köhler. Instead, the artist worked in his studio for years. In 2004, an exhibition was finally scheduled to take place, the first in twelve years. But then the accident happened.

 

Philippines and New Zealand

Woyde-Köhler soon decided to launch the “Mindkiss” project and continue to make Oubey’s art accessible to people in exhibitions and on the internet. “I see myself as a collector, especially of reactions,” says Woyde-Köhler, describing her work. “Because something completely new emerges from the reactions to his art.”

And indeed, Dagmar Woyde-Köhler has been able to reach people all over the world through her husband’s art and her project, which is named after her husband’s first exhibition. In 2023, there was a four-month exhibition in Manila in the Philippines, Woyde-Köhler met US astronomer Seth Shostak and collaborated with graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister. She also visited a Maori school in New Zealand.

Everywhere she went, people looked at Oubey’s art with fascination and found inspiration and stimulation, his wife asserts. “But the best thing is actually all the encounters and interesting conversations that are facilitated by Oubey and his art. He would definitely have been delighted to see what his art does to people and would certainly have liked to be part of these conversations,” says Woyde-Köhler.

 

Interactive project planned

Depth and inspiration have always been what made Oubey’s art so special. Woyde-Köhler describes her husband’s work as follows: “His art is an ode to the joy of discovery. He always had a keen interest in interdisciplinary subjects and combined scientific interest and philosophical approaches in his works. He was firmly convinced that everything is connected.” This approach has now led to great success and recognition around the world. Even though Dagmar Woyde-Köhler does not measure the success of her project in terms of fame or numbers: “For me, success means reaching as many people as possible with Oubey’s art. Especially those outside the art scene who would not otherwise engage with it.”

To guarantee this, Dagmar Woyde-Köhler continues to plan projects and exhibitions. Exhibitions are currently being planned in Helsinki, Barcelona, and Milan. She is also working with her partners on an interactive web experience called “Mindspace,” which is scheduled to launch in March 2025. “Here, we want to focus on Oubey as a person and his interests,” explains Woyde-Köhler. Despite all her many projects, she manages her husband’s legacy with great responsibility and intends to continue fulfilling her promise to carry on his art.

 

DIE RHEINPFALZ –Marco Biallas – August 14, 2024

Photo: Andre Bakker

After all, there have always been more than enough examples of the anti-thesis at all times, including the present day.

OUBEY came across the Monadology at an early age and was fascinated by the metaphysics of Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz on which it was based. As a philosopher, mathematician, physicist, metaphysician, mastermind of what we now call the computer and much more, he is still regarded by many as the last true universal genius.

And so OUBEY dedicated one of his early paintings not to the celebrated Isaac Newton but to Leibniz and his Monadology which had long gone unrecognised, calling it “The Journey of the Monads”.

Over the past four months, as part of the “Art of Resonance” show in the Mind Museum in Manila this painting has been viewed and enjoyed by more people than ever before. This alone would be reason enough to take a closer look at Leibniz’s Monadology

Then recently I read a commentary that referred to the thesis of the best of all possible worlds, only to reduce it to absurdity in light of the abysses into which peoples and nations are still plunging in the 21st century – as though history were nothing to learn from for the future and with this justification at the same time to call into question the divine origin of the world.

I do not feel called upon to philosophise on the existence of a God at this point. But I will say this much: it is striking how easily the inadequacy or even non-existence of a God comes to mind when bad things happen to us whether individually or collectively, caused by natural forces or by the brutal violence people and entire nations inflict on other people and other nations, as we are experiencing directly or indirectly today. And this is especially true when even the most barbaric atrocities are committed in the name of a god.

What fascinated OUBEY about Leibniz’s monadology was less its associated theodicy (justification of God) than its inherent understanding of the freedom, uniqueness and indivisibility of every monad, i.e. every soul in this universe. Bold and still far ahead of even many of today’s thinkers, for Leibniz not only his own human species, but everything that exists in the universe belonged to the animated beings.

Humans – at least according to the current state of knowledge – are the only species on this planet with a free will that goes beyond innate instinctive and generic behaviour and enables decisions that no other being can make. And, if the situation requires it, human will can even go against its own instincts and drives. Decisions such as whether one is prepared to harm another person for whatever reason, whether one is prepared to kill one or even many people, or whether one is able to forego one’s own advantage in favour of another living being are just a few examples of decisions of the will.

According to Leibniz, this world is not the best of all possible worlds because it is perfect, i.e. perfect and flawless in every respect. Rather, it is because it has endowed humans with free will as the only species in this world. A perfect world and the free will of its inhabitants to choose one behaviour or another are mutually exclusive. The question of how free human will really is has also been debated down the ages.

 

Let’s just imagine the opposite: a truly perfect world. People have been dreaming of a perfect world, a paradise on earth, not just since Thomas More published his philosophical treatise entitled “Utopia” in 1516. Just how intelligent Leibniz’s view of the world and mankind was can be seen from the attempts to realise such utopias. Both in the form of small, sectarian communities and in the form of large social attempts at realisation, all ended with the greatest possible lack of freedom for the individual. The fact that these systems are repeatedly abandoned by individuals or overcome by the social collective is a very strong testimony to the strength and power of free will.

For Leibniz, there is no perfect, ideal or even paradisiacal original state of this world and there never was. Quite unlike the belief that human sin was the reason for the expulsion from such a former paradise – as a kind of punishment – and that every human being since then has been born with an “original sin”. I clearly prefer the idea of a universe that accepts human error and even catastrophes and crimes in favour of freedom. In any case, neither the one nor the other can be proven.

Freedom creates space for the possible, for crossing boundaries – in thought and in action, in both positive and negative ways. But freedom also always means responsibility. Everyone decides every day how they use their freedom to make this world a better place or not, and bears the responsibility for doing so. Be it on a small or large scale.

In the “best of all possible worlds”, freedom is a prerequisite. This was probably one of the reasons why an irrepressible free spirit like OUBEY dedicated a painting to Leibniz’s idea. And perhaps this spirit of freedom lives on so strongly in this painting that to this day it immediately casts a spell over almost everyone who sees it.

Those who know me and the MINDKISS Project will know my answer: I’m not interested in the best venues for art. What I’m interested in is the resonance that people have in their encounters with OUBEY’s art. That’s precisely why Manila is interesting for me. And experience proves me right.

In The Mind Museum Manila even the security guards can’t resist the attraction of the pictures and installations on display, and use their breaks to immerse themselves over and over again in the worlds of images and experiences presented in the show which they actually only have to oversee and protect. What a wonderful resonance to the “Art of Resonance Show”! And that’s just one of many other resonances that will be collected and evaluated by the museum team in the coming months. When the exhibition closes we shall publish them.

The decision for this collaboration was easy for me to make after I met the director of the Mind Museum in person for the first time in October last year. She was immediately enthusiastic about the approach and spirit of the MINDKISS project. And I was immediately convinced of the seriousness of her engagement to present the newly conceived “Art of Resonance Show“ of the MINDKISS project in the rooms of The Mind Museum which are freely available for temporary exhibitions. And the young people of the museum´s fantastic team are extraordinarily dedicated, seriously engaged, thoughtful, careful and excellent in any kind of trouble shooting.

The Mind Museum is the only science museum on the Philippines, and owes its existence to the Bonifacio foundation, which seeks to encourage people to engage with art and, especially children, to engage with science and technology. It’s an adventure park of a kind that I’ve only experienced in San Francisco, the Cité de la Science in Paris, and the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

So why on earth should I have said “no” when I am invited to present the newly conceived project exhibition that bridges not just science, technology and art but also the analogue and digital experience of art. In a place dedicated to the discovery and exploration of knowledge that humanity has now gained about the universe, planet Earth, its oceans and inhabitants and our own species.

A place that is as indifferent to the esteem of the so-called experts of the established art world, including its doormen and addressees, as I am but which deals with the same questions and topics in which OUBEY’s art finds its source and roots. I hope that this place does not exist only once in this world in Manila but that in the coming years I shall be lucky enough to bring the “Art of Resonance Show” to similar such free and exciting places in other countries and on different continents – being aware that this will definitely not be easy at all.

When it comes to the wonderful, affable collaboration in the preparation and realisation of this exhibition at the Mind Museum in Manila, such good fortune has a name: that of Maria Isabel Garcia, the director. When, as we were touring the show a few hours before its official opening, I told her how extremely glad I was that this collaboration had come about, she replied, “I am more than glad. If our foundation has a heart´s desire, this is the foundation´s heart´s desire.“

Because this has been the case for both of us since we first met in a hotel early one morning at 7am, this heartfelt wish turned into a joint journey with the aim of creating a novel, unique space of experience in which the MINDKISS of OUBEYs art can be felt.

Incidentally, this exhibition is by way of a triple premiere:

As I celebrate this new exhibition here today in some way, of course I am not forgetting the previous eight stops of the Global Encounter Tour on four continents. Each of them was unique in terms of the particular resonance it gave to OUBEYs art. From the scientists in a symposium at the Goethe Institute in San Francisco and the attendees at an international management conference in Vienna to the students of the CEU in Budapest, now shut down by Orban government, and the children, teachers, and parents of a Maori school in Wellington/New Zealand and the artists from Uganda and Kenya at NIAAD in Kampala.

Meanwhile the ideas slowly formed for a completely new, stimulating and interdisciplinary exhibition concept, and were shaped and realised step by step from 2019 to 2022. They are now all presented to the public for the first time at the Mind Museum in Manila. Without all the earlier encounters and stop-overs, the present exhibition would not have been possible. This is why I would like now to give my heartfelt thanks to all the people who helped to make it possible that the previous stop-overs and the twenty five Encounters with scientists and individuals of various professions could be realised. The pool of inspiration from which the project can draw has steadily grown larger and will continue to grow. Because the journey of the “Expanding Universe of OUBEY MINDKISS” will continue.

 

How was it possible that flowering plants, whose first appearance in evolutionary history can now be dated back to 140 – 250 million years on the basis of fossil finds, could arise at all and develop at high evolutionary speed, since their first appearance, into a diversity of more than 100,000 species?

 

At first everything was green

Until then for three and a half billion years there had only been algae living under water but no plants taking root in the earth. The algae evolved into mosses and then, about 400 million years later, into ferns, the very first stem plants in the history of this planet.

The fern has survived all the ages of the history of the Earth and will also probably survive everything that awaits this planet in the coming decades and centuries – in filigree beauty and organic robustness. An undeniable example of the resilience of plants.

Many years ago when I once had the opportunity to go down into the depths of a coalmine with an experienced companion, when I was crawling through a narrow seam, out of the corner of my eye, in the light of my lamp I saw the imprint of a fern in a lump of coal. Never before and never since in my life have I felt myself so close to the traces of evolutionary history as I did at that moment. I was overcome with emotion and paused. Then I took hold of this lump of coal that who knows how many millions of years ago had absorbed this fern leaf, and continued to crawl on, supporting myself with just the one hand. In the other hand I grasped the fossilised fern and to this day I cherish it with a mixture of affection and respect.

 

Then colour appeared

Like other predecessors of today‘s flowering plants, ferns were and are so-called bisexual gymnosperms. Its bisexual DNA, however, conceals the predisposition to produce an angiosperm, i.e. a flower. Flowering plants have thus evolved from the genetic heritage of gymnosperms. However, with their flowers, which are true “architectural” masterpieces of nature in terms of their inner structures, they have a reproductive organ that cannot fertilise itself but is reliant on cooperation with other forms of life – bees, butterflies and other insects.

For the purpose of reproduction flowering plants developed characteristics that exerted a strong attraction on all kinds of animal pollinators such as bright colours and effusive scents. And due to cross-pollination species mixing or cross pollination spread as various insects took the seeds from one flower to other different kinds and deposited them. Today flowering plants account for 90% of all plant diversity.

 

Darwin would be thrilled

A mere 150 years after Darwin, in the 21st century palaeobotantists using state-of-the-art high tech have solved the problem that was still incomprehensible to Darwin in his time. He would certainly have been thrilled.

He would probably be much less enthusiastic if he knew about the way humans have handled this diversity in the last decades of the 20th century up to the present day. The natural proliferation of flowering plants that once existed in meadows and along roadsides has increasingly been pushed back by agribusiness oriented to the cultivation of crops, as well as by the sealing of the earth’s surface through the expansion of asphalted surfaces and the creation of gardens in which the colourful meadow flowers are eliminated as weeds and replaced by manicured lawns or trimmed conifers set in black gravel.

Every human intervention in the cybernetic system of nature has consequences. If the flowers disappear, the consequence is that their pollinators also disappear. We have known this for a long time. And have started to breed bees, to breed forests and to industrialize farming. But cybernetic systems do not function in linear monocausal chains of action. They are complex. Let’s see how long it takes before our species has really understood this. At least the natural scientists have grasped the point.

 

 

After he admits to the action, the relevant feuilletons report about it, ask about its meaning, and the significance of the image motifs. Some are surprised that he is quite obviously siding with the Ukraine with this action.

I’m surprised that one can be so taken aback about this.

Sympathy

Banksy, as an  intelligent spoilsport of the commercial art and culture business, struck me as likeable from the start. And his ability to show up at the right place at the right time with an effective action, and at the same time to deal visually with complex issues and topics in a way that everyone can understand, impresses me time and time again.

Far from the established art scene, he has managed to reach people with his street art right where they live and roam about. The enormous speed with which this street art then spreads virally on social networks shows its tremendous impact, and so my like for him is combined with equally as much respect.

War

The films and photos of the atrocities committed by the Russian army in Bucha and Irpin went around the world in April. It is precisely there, in Irpin, and also in the towns of Borodyanka and Horenka, that Banksy has now left his mark on the destroyed walls of a kindergarten and on the walls of bombed-out apartment buildings. Anyone who sees these artistic imprints inevitably also sees the traces of the terrible devastation in these and countless other cities and towns in the Ukraine. Banksy makes war a point of discussion simply by bringing these images to the places where they are inextricably linked to people’s everyday lives, within the footprints of the brutal war that Russia has been waging against Ukraine for nine months now.

Resonance

I wonder what the people of Irpin, Borodyanka and Horenka have to say about these imprints Banksy has left on the walls of their destroyed houses.

The response to art, an artistic action or even non-artistic action, is at least as interesting as the artwork or action itself, and ultimately what makes it come alive and keeps it alive. I have been following this trail of  thought for many years, and this also connects me to Banksy.

The first responses on the internet showed not only Banksy’s pictures, but time and time again people who had themselves photographed in front of the pictures or took selfies. Later, Banksy himself posted a video with footage of his campaign on the web. American and German television reports also featured comments from people on site, some of whom had even traveled from other cities to see the murals with their own eyes. They all speak of appreciation and gratitude that someone like Banksy has the courage to come to them, to the Ukrainian war zone, just to express his solidarity and sympathy. Some express the hope that the campaign will generate a new kind of attention for Ukraine’s existential defense struggle, others are simply amazed by what they see.

Art

The motifs of the murals are as disconcerting as they are touching. The places where they can be found are chosen with care. Some, each in a very unique way, bring the vision of a carefree life to the destroyed environment. Others capture a moment of existential horror in everyday life, and others seem to explicitly want to give hope.

There is a ballerina dancing with ease on pointe, swinging a band of cloth over her head, as if she were on a stage. A woman in a robe with curlers in her hair, a gas mask in front of her face and a fire extinguisher in her hand, standing on a chair left isolated, on the wall of a house. In the remains of a tiled bathroom which turned into an outer wall, a man lies in his bathtub, two children teeter on a tank barrier. An oversized phallus rises from an armored vehicle, on the impact hole of a house an acrobat performs a handstand. On the remains of a wall from a destroyed kindergarten, a small boy in a white combat suit taking down a big, strong man.

Particularly, the image of the little boy taking down a big, strong man is the subject of speculation both on the ground and in the media: The boy could symbolize Ukraine defeating Putin. This is also how a Ukrainian woman sees it in one of the videos. My spontaneous association was very close to this idea; it brought back memories of the story of David’s fight against Goliath.

A biblical story

Who does not know this biblical story from the Old Testament? A shepherd boy named David defeats a giant named Goliath. The Old Testament is full of stories that sound fantastic – from the seven plagues God uses to punish the Egyptians, to the Red Sea miraculously parting for the Israelites fleeing Egypt, in order to bury their persecutors underneath themselves afterwards. But none of these stories struck me as realistic as that of David and Goliath when I first heard them in my childhood.

This was not because of how Samuel explains the victory little David won over the powerful Goliath. He writes that this had to happen because David was chosen by God to become the next king of the Israelites. Through his heroic deed against the enemy Philistine, the word of God came to pass and David became Israel’s legendary King David. One of the most exclusive traditional hotels in Jerusalem still bears his name today.

Why David triumphs

What excited me about this story? It was the idea that David, by his own strength and through great courage, the intelligent use of his abilities and the realization of the greatest weakness of his opponent – who was huge, heavily armored and armed, but thereby also having difficulties moving – managed to defeat this monstrous fighting machine called Goliath.

David, as the youngest son of the family, was at that time tending to his family’s flock, defending it daily against the predatory attacks of wild beasts, which he put to flight or killed by the skillful use of his slingshot.

The stone, which he hurled skillfully and with such great force against the forehead of his seemingly overpowering opponent, hit him so deeply and forcefully that he fell head first and lay unconscious, his colossal body powerless in the sand. The fact that David then also cut off his head and thus dispersing the entire host of Philistines – who had been mocking David until then – confident of victory, was no longer in my memory when I looked at Banksy’s spray-painting. I only found that out when I went a little deeper into this biblical story. The stories of the Old Testament are not only remarkable, but occasionally of blunt cruelty.

Symbol and role model

For thousands of years, the story of David and Goliath has stood as a symbol and example for sheer size not having to be synonymous with invincible strength or power. That a single person – if he does not allow himself to be intimidated by the apparent greatness of the opponent, and instead remembers his own strengths and courageously confronts the superior power – can turn the tide of history. In this respect, it is more than a story about a divinely chosen one. It is a story of encouragement that has lost none of its exemplary power, even well into the 21st century.

The comparison to the courageous defensive struggle of the Ukraine against the seemingly invincible superiority of the Russian army is obvious, and it is also strongly suggested by Banksy through the context in which he places the image.

No biblical story

But this is not a biblical story. The Ukraine is not a single person, but a country, a nation. It may be small compared to vast Russia – that is attacking it with the sole aim of wiping out its existence – but the Ukraine is not fighting alone, it has strong partners by its side who support the country in many ways. Nevertheless this fight is strenuous; it will take a long time and will claim many victims.

For me, however, the Ukraine has one thing in common with little David from the Old Testament: As a community, it has the courage and the valiant determination to defend its country, its freedom, and to win this battle. It will not be intimidated and it will not give up.

What remains

Banksy’s images do nothing to change the existential threat in which the people of these cities he visited, and of Ukraine as a whole, have been living in for nine months now – and against which they have defended themselves with great courage, equally great humanity and admirable indomitability.

But now they are here, these pictures. They have appeared unexpectedly, as if out of nowhere, and, for a few days at least, they have once again drawn the attention of the world to what the people in Ukraine experience and suffer through day after day – to the extent of the world already having become accustomed to this struggle.

For the people of Ukraine, especially in Irpin, Borodyanka and Horenka, these images will probably remain a lasting reminder, even after the war, that someone like Banksy was once among those who stood by their side – standing with the Ukraine.

 

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