Hamilton Mestizo
librepensante.org
By Isabel
González Ugalde and Rebeca Torres del Castillo
Mestizo is a young Colombian artist whose work is
focused in questioning the limits between disciplines; he combines art, science
technology, biology and society. Hamilton
shows a marked interest in electronic arts and programming. His whole work has
a strong social concern that appears especially in his website librepensante.org. The website means to
build an on- line community and a
network of knowledge. This network means to create bonds and communication
between people that work in different disciplines who have a common interest
which is to share knowledge aiming to promote a social development and a free
culture. The idea is that anybody can be a part of the community and everybody
can contribute with something to the research and work of the other by the
production of creative projects. The network implies infinite interpretations
by the users appropriation of the knowledge found on the page and therefore
infinite possibilities of projects and multiple alternatives of application.
The website promotes a collective creation where
interaction and dialogue is vital; the users interact directly through the use
of groups and chats. Mestizo believes in a new form of knowledge he calls Especialización Pirata (Pirate
Specialization) which means that every user can specialize in a new discipline
by the de-specialization of his own area of work. This also involves the free use
of information conditioned only by the use of quotes.
The artist promotes the creation of a local industry
with the DIY (Do It Yourself) and DIWO (Do It With Others) culture where the
users can create their own artistic devices through the use of tutorials and
wikis. Hamilton has an ecological concern that appears in his project Free Energy in which the general idea is
to create self-sustainability by the creation of organisms that are half
organic and half electronic. An exchange of energy happens through a chemical
battery that extracts the energy of a biological organism to power electronic
devices.