v*i*d*a lab

The talk will present v*i*d*a lab, a study program for industrial design students at Javeriana University in Bogotá, Colombia, initiated by Alejandro Tamayo in January 2006.

The purpose of the program is to serve as a bridge between scientific and technological developments and the everyday life. It has counted with a transdisciplinary group of teachers ranging from industrial design, fine arts, biology, ecology, anthropology, electrical engineering, among others.

Design projects initiate by the exploration of a very broad question: “What is life?” both from organic (biological) and post-organic (electronic, digital) perspectives. Students look for new connections and relations that may enrich or question traditional categories usually associated with the idea of Life. Findings and interrogations look for ways to be translated into design projects.

Students in the program learn about electronics and physical computing and acquired basic notions of biology and microbiology, being encouraged to reflect critically and poetically about contemporary scientific and technological developments.

Links:
www.thepopshop.org/vida
www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2007/02/interview-with-11.php
www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/01/by-the-way-im-working.php

Alejandro Tamayo is an artist-engineer and a teacher working in the intersections of design, art, science and technology. Originally trained as an engineer in Colombia, he later pursued studies in Digital Technologies at the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. Alejandro has been working for the past four years for the Department of Aesthetics at the Javeriana University in Bogotá, where he directs v*i*d*a lab, a special research program for industrial design students that is focusing on the interrogation of life and the relations between organic (biological) and post-organic (electronic,digital) visions as a source of inspiration for the development of new design/art products and ideas.

In Prague Alejandro will also talk about his ongoing (2003-2008) artistic project called Statistical Objects. This work has been an attempt to make visible and audible the human rhythms of birth and death. Using the U.S. Census Bureau as a source of statistical information, every time a new human being is born in the planet a light bulb turns on, consequently every time a new death arises a hair dryer turns on. Presently the human birth rate is calculated in 4.2 births per second, while the death rate is only 1.8.