What is the Bedeutungslabor?
The Bedeutungslabor (Meaning Lab) is a project platform of the artist Adib Fricke, where he experimentally and playfully asks questions about the formation of meaning.
The Bedeutungslabor is concerned with such different themes as thinking and its neuroscientific basis, the origin of poetic ideas, or the structuring and possibilities of creative processes. Its approach is interdisciplinary, dialogical, provocative, and surprising.
The Bedeutungslabor is a dynamic space for curiosity and interchange. Its activities take place in both virtual and real space. It develops and presents artistic works. The website bedeutungslabor.com is also the project archive.
How does the brain work?
Your Brain is Your Brain is an art project linked to the neurosciences. It deals with neuroplasticity, the ability of the human brain to remain in constant change, and with neuroaesthetics, theories on the neurological basis of the production and perception of artworks. Questions and findings from current brain research were the starting point for the artistic work. The project came about in dialogue with researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, who have provided the Bedeutungslabor with short texts on Fricke's headlines.
See also Ten Thousand Steps
Thinking something new
Big Ideas is an art project with a focus on the aha effect (eureka moment). It is based on questions about the possibilities of the creative process. How does something new come about? How do we get new ideas? What can we do to be creative? The answers are twelve challenging sentences that present themselves as a guide for creative activity.
With phrases like “Share your enthusiasm or “Collect and connect,” Fricke directly addresses the viewers from his perspective as an artist. He invites us to become involved with aspects of creative thinking and the creative act, and opens up an experiential space of creativity.
See also A Linguistic Alchemist in the Laboratory of Meaning
Adib Fricke
Since the 1980s, Adib Fricke has been involved with words, the meanings of words, and the communication of ideas.
He initially created text films and text images, or chance generators such as The Smile of Leonardo da Vinci, a program that can produce approximately 30 million sentences about visual art. Fricke became well known with The Word Company, which he founded in 1984 in order to circulate protonyms—words without meaning.
Under the heading of Wordspaces, Fricke then developed various works with text fragments complied from the Internet, e.g. the light-box installation Above us the Sky, for the Lufthansa Training and Conference Center, or the multipart wall piece Zur Theorie der Gedanken for the new building of Lucerne University (2011).
Further information may be found on the archive page.
