Hi there, we (Lizett Pérez Castro and Omar Ponce Carrillo) coordinate an academic institute of social research focused on enhancing the collective intelligence of the public university in México. This institute is located at the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), and we work specifically with the student community of our faculty, on self-working employment and cultural projects, as a way of criticizing the political (your ideas, faith and pleasure), economical (your vital and mental subsistence), and nationalist (the meaning of your life) oppression exercised by the parasitical and plundering entelequia that (we) the mexicans name as the nation state.
What follows next is a brief explanation of one of the main current projects hosted at the institute, which is presented as an arts & crafts mexican workshop called Único, and makes use of WeSay and Dictionary App Builder.
We created an Android mobile app of an unpublished collection of nahua glifos sketches, according to the original nahua iconography, as presented in the AMOXCALLI and TETLACUILOLLI dictionaries.
The app is presented as a dictionary, where the glifo itself is related with its audio pronunciation and its meaning in Spanish and English.
The first beta version starts with 20 glifos, and it is intended to add one glifo per week, until we reach the final amount of 100 glifos for the final version of the app.
The dictionary was first build on WeSay, and then programmed as an Android app on Dictionary App Builder.
The glifos were drawn first over a XP-Pen tablet on Krita, and then enhanced on GIMP.
We would like to thank the cartoonist and conceptual artist Luis Ricardo Ramos, who kindly donated three glifos inspired on our prehispanic tradition about the endemic species of México, which are displayed at the top of the navigation drawer of the app.
The image of the craft displayed on the feature graphic was taken from here.
The promo video was created with Audacity and Quicktime Pro. The background audio starts with a sequence of this heavy stomp sound effect, which holds a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license, and continues with an extract of “Rio de nueve corrientes” from Mexican ambient electronic musician Jorge Reyes (1952-2009). According to the Music Policy Directory of the Youtube website, the respective copyright owners of the song hasn’t specified its policies yet (July 2019).
The free distribution and use of this dictionary, justifies our desire of freedom and transcendence (not only conservation) for our shared patrimonial cultural heritage.
The webpage of the app and the workshop as a whole was partially created with RocketCake.
The app can be downloaded from here or here.
Lizett is a crafter and micro farmer. She graduated from the BUAP as an economist. Omar is an ice cream micro producer and seller, graphic designer, and research professor at the Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales - BUAP. He has Ph.D. in sociology by the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades “Alfonso Vélez Pliego” - BUAP.
Truly regards
Liz & Omar