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.
- The Belgian comic artist Jean Giraud, whom OUBEY revered, chose the pseudonym Mœbius for himself. For OUBEY, this was not only a programmatic statement, but also an expression of a strong spiritual connection. As a reference to Jean Giraud alias Mœbius, some of the Sparks in OUBEY MINDSPACE contain colorful allusions to his wonderful comic world.
- Perry Rhodan, the weekly science fiction series that OUBEY had been reading since he was twelve, named volume 1700 after the inventor of the infinity loop Perry Rhodan series Möbius. After OUBEY had read the magazine, he passed it on to me so that I could read it too. This happened from time to time when he thought a story was particularly important, interesting, or well written. The Möbius novel was written by his favorite author at the time, Robert Feldhoff, who died far too young.The story is about the search for the keyword to solve the greatest cosmic mystery. It lies about 225 million light-years away from the human galaxy at the site of the Great Void, is ancient, and is simply called MÖBIUS …
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 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 great design of OUBEY MINDSPACE, which has already won three prestigious international design awards – most recently the Red Dot Award 2025.