Maya Hackers WikiLab

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Maya Hackers designs ritual objects for the Re programming of collective imagery, inspired by shamanic practices applied in the social and political realm. Read the full Maya Hackers Manifesto.

"At what point does the work that is ritual begin to merely resemble ritual? At what point does it lose its ritualistic power and become cheesy new-age fluff?"

Lucy Lippard in Overlay.

Overview

Maya Hackers is a bundle of projects at the interphase between art, culture and technology. The projects explore ways to Inject Mayan culture elements into Guatemalan collective imagery, as part of the transformation process taking place in the country.

The Maya Hackers projects propose future oriented views of Mayan culture interacting with other cultures, breaking off with the stereotype that indigenous cultures are something from the past. In the same way the evolution of our body is stored in our DNA, many ancient cultural elements remain alive in contemporary culture. If that cultural trends have survived to this day, is because they are useful, playing a role in the integrity and identity of social groups.

Ancient Cultures and Open Source

It happens with ancient cultures that their elements can be used without restriction, they are considered a heritage of humanity. In practice, they are treated like a free repository of designs and ideas that anybody can take and use. The issue is more complex when those ancient cultures are living cultures because you could be taking an element that is highly significant for somebody. In some sense, for some people ,the cultural elements are part of themselves, and by using such cultural elements you are interacting with people in some way.

Living Ancient Cultures analogy to Open Source

There is a difference between taking cultural elements that nobody uses anymore and taking elements that still are part of the identity of a group. The first cultural elements could be treated like a free repository, but the second set is more like an open source repository. Open source is not equal to free stuff. Open source is a different kind of economy where many people work on a program for "free" because the program is their working tool to do other stuff. For example, everybody in a community will naturally work together to construct a road or a bridge for the community, because everyone is going to use it, and nobody is able to do it alone.

With open source, it is the use value of the software what keeps the economy going. The contributors to the Open source project will gain a reputation that can be readily exchanged in the environment of the project, for example, to get a better job offer, or to get more financing for a project, etc. So working in the open source project for "free" is your way to promote yourself in the environment of software development.

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“Images and activities borrowed from ancient or foreign cultures are useful as talismans for self-development, as containers. But they become ritual in the true sense only when filled by a communal impulse that connects the past (the last time we performed this act) and the present (the ritual we are performing now) and the future (will we perform it again?).”

Lucy Lippard in Overlay

The Seed Projects

The Maya Hackers projects are designed in analogy with seeds, the projects should contain the means to grow and propagate. To consider this "sustainability" of a project or the viability of a vector for a cultural information is to couple it to the economy, for a project to approach "ritual" it must find its own source of energy.

Contemporary Art

Exhibitions. Land art.

The Hill of Gold project in Atitlan

Solar Eye calendar sculpture and astronomical observatory

Several sculptures have been placed in sacred mountains, and inside the "zero Kilometer" gallery situated in the so-called National Palace in Guatemala city.

Mayan Textiles

The Mayan textile is one of the most important examples of a self-sustainable cultural feature, at the heart of this industry is the fact that Mayan women produce it and wear it in a self-supporting cycle. Since the textiles are very beautiful, they can also reach other markets and be produced for export. But the need to evolve the designs and introduce new variations comes from the fact that women use it and are ready to pay for the new models coming up every season. Knowing how to make very customized designs is a highly priced ability, and that keeps the art alive. Nobody owns the designs, they are more valued the more people use them and understand them like the elements of a language shared by a community. In the same way a poem makes something different out of words that everyone uses, a skillful designer can make a new textile out of the common design pool.

Sculpture

Archaeology replicas, museum, architectural parts.

Graphic Design

Digital art, painting, sculpture.

Video Production

Educational, promotional.

Introduccion a las Tablas Astronomicas en el Codice Dresden

Publications

Books, articles, printed material.

The Mirror of Winal

Clothing Jewelry Accessories

Re-loading ancient design in the collective pool of contemporary Maya weavers. Jewelry, accessories.

Applied Research

Maya Astronomy, etno mathematics, Mayan epigraphy, oral tradition, languages. Workshops, conferences, consulting.

Astronomía Maya en el códice de Dresden

La Tabla de Eclipses en El Códice de Dresden. Artículo Científico

-> WEB ooo

Maya Hackers at OpenSea.

MayaHackers is about programming, and what could be more fashionable than web 3 programming? let's have a look.

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