REVIEWS BY STUDENTS: Mestizo

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.