Alejandro Tamayo is an artist-engineer and a teacher working in the intersections of design, art and new technologies in a country that is often seen as the land of wild cartels, coffee, futbol, the terribly boring Fernando Botero (i'm quoting you here, Alejandro!): Colombia. I discovered his work by chance. He had emailed me to say that he wished i'd cover more of the Latin American art scene. That's something i'd love to do but i wouldn't know where to look for information about what's going on up there (although i read Spanish). Then i realized that the best way to start was to ask a few questions to Alejandro about the lab he's currently directing in Bogota.
The v*i*d*a lab, part of the Aesthetics Department at the Javeriana University, is focusing on the development of new design products and ideas. Guided by a reflexion on life itself, the course proposes to engage with organic (biological) and "post-organic" (electronic, digital) visions, trying to identify new relationships and interrogations that could be translated into the realization of concrete projects.