• demo of portfolio made with are.na's api
• my site deployments
• are.na's api-examples repo
• source code
• portfolio.glosse.me/

📨 messages

** channels i love

• channels i've made

++ studio (general)

• craft / studio (specific)

// library of pdfs

/ my notes on specific texts

⚘⚘ garden (general)

⚘ garden (specific)

@Pontifex - https://x.com/Pontifex/status/2060685288163144177

Connecting young people to digital networks serves no purpose if they remain disconnected from themselves, others, and their own interiority. We must help young people rediscover silence, reflection, the ability to ask questions, the depth of relationships, and openness to transcendence. To listen to the soul, we must lend an ear, because the soul's voice is not a shout, but a whisper.

draw on my internet wall ᝰ

ft. round gengar, @janellehizon & @behrylium https://x.com/meganvphi/status/2036655536725205146/video/1

Mar 25, 2026, 4:04:53 AM

some thoughts —

• channel names use self defined metaphors: while I might name mine after roads, you might try out different colors and textures, while someone else might use punctuation and diacritics as their mode of navigation/spatial building

• different levels of visibility (private/closed/open) could lead to different types of interaction and one might find new ways to understand the physicality/architecture of Are.na

some considerations —

• being aware of blocks and making sure to tend rather than aggregate

That atrophy is something I consider often, not with regard to my own use necessarily, but how this comes back to the short-termism I hope we can collectively overcome. More often than not, these tools sell us on efficiency and productivity to save time in the here-and-now (with a vast majority of AI serving corporate interests); but if they create long-term atrophies in the future like muscles that need to be intentionally worked out in a new creative gym, then it's like we're solving problems with the same way of thinking that got us here in the first place (one of my favourite lines, attributed to Einstein). To be humane today is to be slow and intentional and surrounded by context, like a forest in perpetual growth within cycles of life and death to allow for renewal. Being 'left behind' in some ways is a choice to be part of the forests can grow slowly and strongly together in the fragments that decided not to become caught within the madness or atrophy of the centre. Being sold acceleration with no pause, removes the creative process and we must fight for it by protecting the places where we can mutually be in that space together. Think alternative spaces online, like the cosy web and its' communities or offline communities that are reciprocal and supportive in some way (basically, non-extractive).

As a geographer, I am always curious in the linkages between human behavioural dynamics that can be found within ecosystem dynamics. In ecology, an ecotone is the transition zone between two ecosystems – think between forest and grassland, land and sea, riverbank and terrestrial terrain. 'Edge effects' often indicate how these zones can host greater biodiversity, produce higher species interaction, generate novel behaviours and adaptations, and contain both cooperation and tension as sites of instability and emergence. In complex adaptive systems, innovation rarely comes from the centre, rather it comes from the margins, because margins are less regulated, less optimised, and therefore allow mutation. Yet in studying edge effects, we often see that these mutations without support collapse.

Historically, artists occupy similar edges. They live and work in economic peripheries (warehouses, temporary studios, informal venues, illegal spaces) often preceding urban redevelopment in what’s known as the “creative class” paradox. They sit between disciplines (art, design, science, technology, activism) and function as translators between dominant systems. In this sense, artists inhabit cultural, economic, and political ecotones: spaces of heightened interaction and possibility, where new forms emerge, but where precarity mirrors the instability of ecological edges when they are not structurally protected. With this in mind, I ask if and how emerging technology might be designed and deployed to serve humanity in this way?

✦ ideas
raw sparks and intuitions beginning to find form

✿ playground
sensory delights drifting through a loose field

: resources
references, tools, and bookmarks to revisit later

☐ framework
structures and logics that lend thought its shape

⊡ concepts
where ideas meet structure and begin to hold meaning

what do you carry with you as you explore the internet?

whats in ur tote on the internet subway

Jun 28, 2022, 1:49:29 PM

~  trains of thought
;  notes and research
<  specific to me
>  collections
^  micro-collections
?  i don't know where this goes yet
\  no longer active

note: this is not prescriptive. it is subject to any number of changes.

(heavily inspired by nico chilla)

recreated a vintage photobooth for valentine’s day 💘

each of my loved ones is getting a special prototype link with a handwritten note https://x.com/meshtimes_/status/1885874430930214941/video/1

Feb 2, 2025, 2:14:36 AM

✧ Top
📜 Great Reads (on various topics)
👨🏾‍🦳👩🏽‍💼 Humans
☨ Christianity
20 - 29 Topics of Interest
30 - 39 Culture + Issues (around the world)
40 - 49 Resources (toolkits, podcasts...)
50 - 59 Human Pleasures (cooking, reading...)

“When you read them, yeah, they’re reviews of a sort,” Killian said of his reviews. “But they also seem like novels. They’re poems. They’re essays about life.” One day, he is writing about Liz Kotz’s art-historical volume on the “turn toward language” in visual art in the nineteen-sixties. Then he is doing a close reading of Kristen Stewart’s hair in “Twilight.” Then a tape of “Viniyoga Therapy for the Low Back, Sacrum and Hips.” (“I wanted to get a good viniyoga tape ever since the early ’70s when, as a boy, I suffered a lower-back injury in France, when I was pushed out of a slowly moving bus by some schoolmates.”)

⩾ ongoing references
≈ some projects and artworks I've made
⊍ projects-related materials
⊡ artist references
⧃ resources

I have three distinct types of channels, each with their own naming scheme.

1. Data-type channels are the most broad, grouping blocks by general information types, e.g. .IMAGE, .EXCERPT, .SOUND.
2. Named channels can function as tags, projects, or atomised ideas, e.g. community, personal website, deconstruction of social media. Generally, a longer name signals a more specific channel. I also distinguish between types of channels that fall under the same name, e.g. code (cheatsheets) and code (tools). If I need a few topics grouped under one name, they go in the [].
3. Publication channels group excerpts and other information relating to a single piece of media, usually a book, e.g. Papanek Victor / Design For The Real World

Harari

• misinformation
• disinformation
• information poverty
• information disparity
• information redlining (segregation)
• information exclusion
• information withdrawal (censorship)

This is online skimming, which we call reading. We've become too time-poor to read deeply with the amout of information we are consuming.

We should always be in a process of accessing, interpreting and then applying information. When we apply information that's when it becomes knowledge.

so far the idea is that this will be a rotating channel tracking what i am actively thinking on. themes, questions, feelings, blocks/channels from the community, anything. the idea comes from this practice i used to do where i would write "things on my mind" in the centre of a journal page and just brain dump (like, really pour it out) entirely unrelated things in clusters around it so that they could coexist. there is a private channel acting as a backlog for anything that has appeared here.

also to give my are.na a voice? i realised there is no commanding or guiding voice that stands out above the noise of all my separate channels to provide some kind of synthesis.

✶ starting points
! needs sorting
: super channels
× archived

If you could design a digital space, what would it look/feel like?
I wish there was a social network where instead of a “profile page” you could set up your own “secret hideout” page and decorate it and invite your friends to leave notes or little items, or have sub-chats there. I’ve always loved the secret hideouts you could find in games like WoW, especially when you might run into friends or rivals and strike up a conversation in the local chat.

can I sit next to you on the internet

Nov 24, 2023, 5:20:00 PM

—Austin Robey

"I think we're going to move back to a world with color, texture, dimensionality, more haptic feedback. I don't think it's going to be skeuomorphism where it pretends to be a wood grain to reference a dashboard or leather, I think it's going to have a sense of dimension." (cont)

"I think we're going to move back to a world with color, texture, dimensionality, more haptic feedback. I don't think it's going to be skeuomorphism where it pretends to be a wood grain to reference a dashboard or leather, I think it's going to have a sense of dimension." (cont)

"I think the reason why is we're spending more and more time on screens and we want the screens to replicate some of what we see in the natural environment. Light, texture. I think it's more intuitive, it's more playful." (cont)

"I think AI allows the development of more sophisticated interfaces. People in AI are gravitating to image generating art that has got more dimension to it. And so I think that we've really started to push this more three-dimensional, colorful aesthetic."

from @lennysan's interview with @bchesky: https://x.com/lennysan/status/1723746780188479841?s=20

why @bchesky thinks flat design is over:

"I'd like to make the announcement that I think flat design is over or ending. I think if you remember the 2000s was dominated by skeuomorphism. The 2010s have been dominated with the launch of iOS seven by flat design." (cont)

– @jsngr

Nov 14, 2023, 12:45:25 AM

aw, imagining what it would be like if everyone had a personal discord server, to visit each others' servers like hanging out in each others' homes

3:34 AM · Feb 3, 2022

Your Discord is "open" but not "cosy open". A form is so cold! So for these unindexable-yet-open spaces, can there be: doorways, porches, stoops, window displays. What's the Discord equiv of those big-windowed canal facing front rooms that everyone has in Amsterdam?

8:33 AM · Jun 10, 2021

It was like a giant community leaf-raking project in which everyone was called a groundskeeper. Some brought very fancy professional metal rakes, or even back mounted leaf-blowing systems, and some were just kids thrashing away with the sides of their feet or stuffing handfuls in the pockets of their sweatshirts, but all the leaves they brought to the pile were appreciated. And the pile grew and everyone jumped up and down in it having a wonderful time. And it grew some more, and it became the biggest leaf pile anyone had ever seen anywhere, a world wonder.

Those structures are what’s being built up when someone links to you, which is maybe one reason why it feels like Something in a disproportionate way – you’re not just being acknowledged with an incremented ❤️-counter, you’re being drawn closer into a mesh-neighborhood in the only way that anyone ever is

as social network cartography gets more advanced, i wouldn’t be surprised if people develop something like anti-surveillance makeup but for their digital personalities. i liked the way @mostlyvibing put it: “containing multitudes will be incentivized”

i think a lot of ppl are resistant to the idea of being mapped & tagged by faraway data analysts who don’t know you. maybe one defense mechanism that emerges is increased psychological speed limits — getting good at flitting through many identities/vibes, becoming a moving target
– @aaronzlewis

Mar 10, 2021, 4:20:42 AM

• If we want to preserve the zero-install experience of the web and enable rich web pages, we need some way to share objects across sites. We can't and shouldn't rely on browsers to implement the majority of APIs. There has to be some way for developers to do this.

@modeless It's just sad. I think there was a big opportunity lost here. Fuchsia is exploring the same design space, and it's very cool, but I wish it was available to the web:

https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/get-started/learn/intro/packages

@modeless It also seems that there could be a header that http://chase.com could set that controls whether it wants to participate in shared caches at all ala CSP, though I'm not sure if that's required.

• The arc of software history bends toward the right solution, independent of roadblocks. Nowadays because of OSS the arc bends a lot faster. It's very difficult/impossible for vendors to mandate something that isn't good. – @aboodman

Mar 8, 2023, 6:20:31 AM

What if hyperlinks told you how busy it was at the other end? Just some playing with big yellow circles to do that

What if, when you hovered, the people at the far end saw you peeping 👀

(Not the most complex or insightful sketch in the world... but there's all this stuff I want to explore around multiplayer and presence and NPCs etc, so this is the beginning of a little sandbox. Gotta start somewhere)

Also in the spirit of learning: what's the best way to share 30 second videos on Twitter without them over-compressing?

Feb 23, 2023, 3:06:31 PM

> tech
∗ reflection
⌑ art/archives
♡ love
" definitions
○ collections
⌂ society
✑ books
$ self

— Shinichi Nakazawa, “Beyond Development: Rediscovering Nature’s Wisdom”

— John Gray, Straw Dogs

There is a japanese term, ichigen-san otogawari, roughly: "by introduction only". It describes a practice of some restaurants to only accept guests they have a relation to – by introduction through a former guest, or by a prior conversation in person or by exchanging a couple of emails. It's not about exclusivity, since everyone is welcome. The prerequisite is solely to explain one's motivations for coming, and making a modicum of time and effort to understand the restaurant's approach. This way, it is protected from diners who come without actual interest and appreciation for what is offered – it can operate with a level of safety and comfort.

This principle may be an influence for better digital spaces – in contrast to the ubiquitous and immediate access expected in digital media. Direct relations disperse the focused pressure created by social media networks: Requiring a human mode of interaction, requiring users to momentarily think and consider the other, to consider language, is enough to transform expectations and ensure eye level in following interactions.

Ichigen-san otogawari acts as a kind of captcha – ensuring that the guest, client or user is actually human. Not in the sense that it is not a machine or bot, but in the sense that it has the capacity to be attentive for a brief moment, and considerate of others. It is a vetting system any human being is able to pass.

The prefixes ronna and quetta represent 1027 and 1030, and ronto and quecto signify 10−27 and 10−30.

Earth weighs around one ronnagram, and an electron’s mass is about one quectogram. Ronna and quetta might sound strange now, but so did giga and tera once, says metrologist Olivier Pellegrino. This is the first update to the prefix system since 1991, when zetta (1021), zepto (10−21), yotta (1024) and yocto (10−24) were added.

under construction

⟟ Personal Channels that store things just for me. The Are.na equivalent of things you stuff into the notes app.

⧉ Resources

⧝ Inspiration Inspiration channels often lack thought or intention. Primary create and visual, the ambiguous collections consist of loosely categorized things that peak my interest and might want to more thoughtfully reference or connect in the future. Working as a staging area of sorts, inspiration channels are central to my creative process, but lack substance on their own.

⌂ Notes

⌭ Garden

⍝ Case Study Case studies act as deep dives into a topic, mood, or idea. While similar to a garden, they lack the same breadth. Instead of connecting ideas or developing a philosophy, case studies focus more on curation and the effect of a collection as a whole.

⍾ Projects Collections of visual inspiration, reference material, and notes for various projects, including my personal, academic, and creative work. While sometimes moldboard-esque, project channels primarily serve to organize all things related to a specific project so they're easily accessible when needed.

🌸 | inspiration
💡 | words
🛏 | home
🪚 | tools
🌱 | research
📚 | media queue
🧓 | resources
📎 | projects
📎 | 🟢 | active
📎 | ⚪️ | passive
🍄 | nature
🍠 | food
📦 | archive

This is misguided. Gardening is a practice that treats a personal website as a constantly evolving landscape where you develop your ideas in public.

Gardens are...
a) Explorable, rather than structured as a strictly linear steam of posts. This is usually achieved through deeply interlinking notes where readers can navigate freely through the content.
b) Slowly grown over time, rather than creating "finished" work that you never touch again. You revise, update, and change your ideas as they develop, and ideally find a way to indicate the "done-ness" state to your reader.

No framework, platform, plug-in, service, or fun interface element defines a garden, and never will. Do whatever works for you, at whatever technical level feels comfortable. Just keep gardening 🪴

Plants can’t be rushed. They grow on their own. Your website can be the same way, as long as you pick the right soil, water it (but not too much), and provide adequate sunlight. Plant an idea seed one day and let it gradually grow.

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/laurel-schwulst-my-website-is-a-shifting-house-next-to-a-river-of-knowledge-what-could-yours-be/

🥼 General Topics
🕵️ Investigations
📠 Medical Tools
🏥 Fields of Thought
🧍 Human Body Physiology
🧠 Brain
🧬 Genetics
🍖 Food
* 🍖🍽️ Diets
🌿 Natural Drugs
⚗️ Chemistry
💊 Drugs, Vitamins, Nutrients
* 💊🍴 Vitamins
* 💊⚕️ Pharmaceutical Drugs
🗺️ Environmental Factors
🦠 Bacteria, Virus, Infectious Agents
😷 Aliments, Diseases, Disorders, Disabilities, Conditions, Syndromes
🤒 Symptoms
🩹 Treatments

~ UltimApe's self / health research repository.

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~ curating
+ collecting
? thinking
$ working together
= working alone
! inviting

https://www.are.na/di-lu/

🌐 geo-design
🐁 life things
🐄 built environment
🐌 coding resources
🐺 personal interests
🐽 self-initiated research
🔮 self-initiated projects
🕷 club
🦇 art
🦎 graphics
🦑 thematics
🦧 self

Hello, welcome to my virtual home. Switch to index view when you're back on my main profile.

⭐ = Main. ~You are here~
📎 = Related to my MFA thesis
📒 = Categories, current classes
📓 = Projects I'm working on
📖 = Design fields
📚 = Generic research
✏️ = All things typography
🔌 = Internet and web related
🔎 = Culture / race / ethnicity
🔖 = Design-oriented research
🔜 = Goals
🔮 = Creatives that inspire my practice
🧁 = Personal practice
🧬 = Other interests related to the human psyche

by ~ https://www.are.na/nico-chilla

} professional, (design-) educational
< jobs / freelance, limbo, buffer
~ specific topics and projects
! general tech/tech-mediated living/culture-related
# general meme, online culture related
& big baskets for all
( open-ended, atmospheric

() softer moods

) thoughts, notes, more interior
* special concepts, practices, and rituals
-- collaborations
/ log, devlog
: broad (design-related) reference
< (shows up as empty channel name) limbo, buffer
@ correspondence
— specific tech/interface/interaction related
] stuff to read
^ wishlists
☕︎ “real life”
× messy, to be discarded, miscellaneous

key through late August 2022

— themes that are important to me, research
() softer, more ambiguous moodboards and atmospheres
* practice, intentional channels: will move stuff from _ (visual reference) in the past to these. these will be regularly revisited and reflected on
<> partially hidden channels: for processing, queue, misc notes

key through late June 2021

— cool themes [1]
_ visual reference
() atmospheres, moodboards
: resources, " : " to branch
* bud, hopeful
? learning about design
+ tactile things, reflections on craft and making
~ music
! important links
– sub branch that isnt part of the tree
-- collaborative
/ backlog, paused