Hi,

Welcome to the second issue of the Are.na Community Newspaper, which is distributed via this Editorial newsletter (if this was forwarded to you, subscribe here). We published the first issue of the newspaper back in March, and now we’re back with some news and human-interest features focused on the Are.na community.

Since last time, the Are.na Classifieds ads have gotten some nice engagement, with Laurel’s Are.na Pairing Service receiving over 70 responses (submissions are now closed and everyone’s paired up) and lots of activity in Leslie’s Are.nauts Group, including the making of a webring. There’s more Classifieds below, and we now have a channel where you can post your own.

The Community Newspaper is an evolving experiment; the goal is to surface what’s happening on Are.na and help connect people on and off the platform. If you have something to share, feel free to reply directly to this email or connect to one of our Are.na Community Newspaper channels.

— Meg Miller

Member Spotlight: the team behind New York Television

What is New York Television and how did it come about?

Kaye Loggins: New York Television is free, independent, internet television, streaming 24/7 at nytv.live. We bring a mix of original and archival works, live events, durational entertainment, music, and film.

After my experience in live-streaming over the years, NYTV grew out of a frustration with continually worsening internet platforms, with even once-novel 2010s YouTube and other videos collecting dust as their platforms enshittify around them. There’s also the increasing trend of live-streaming to YouTube or Twitch only, even by independent artists, and the slow descent into short-form content and algorithms. When a scheduled show isn’t airing, we play “The Loop”, a collection of thousands of hours of archival, educational, and original programming from the 1910s to 2020s.

Were there any examples of television that you were looking toward when developing NYTV? Anything in particular you were responding against?

Kate Sweeney: I’ve been working on public access TV shows and for major networks for over 10 years, having helmed shows on MNN and helped run 8-Ball TV. My paid work has been at major networks, watching them slowly make terrible decisions over and over again. This has definitely helped shape my POV on what to work against and what not to do.

Current TV is a major inspiration to me — the network started off with user-created videos that played in “pods,” as well as clip-style Current News shows hosted by not-very-famous comedians. I don’t think anyone else on the team watched it, because not many people watched it. I had no idea at the time that it was launched by Al Gore. 8-Ball TV follows a similar programming: community-submitted videos with some original programs and live events coverage.

KL: My influences on the project range from Robin Byrd to 60 Minutes, Jeopardy!, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, G4, to even VICELAND, to some degree. Outside of TV: Nintendo, Ackerman, Adam Curtis, Sun Ra, and Open-Source Software culture.

What’s the programming like?

Whitley Watson: It’s a mixture of news, film, music videos, animations and live talk show broadcasts, meant to pair the traditional offerings and format of television with the technology of new developments like Twitch and YouTube, but with the goal of tipping the scale back towards entertaining and inspiring rather than exploiting. We hope to offer a distinct experience where people are able to authentically connect with material, appreciate artists as human beings working in real communities, feel inspired to become creators themselves, and connect with other users through communal live experiences, the chat, and in-person meetups. This summer, we are looking to produce original Sports programming to offset our more artistic and intellectual options.

Becca Abbe: The programming is intentionally broad. In both our curation and our own productions, we try to highlight things that are unique and otherwise unseen. The hope is our container’s design extracts any nostalgia from archival works and allows people to discover them anew.

Who do you imagine is your primary audience, and what kind of feedback from people have you gotten so far?

Jordan Defilippo: I would imagine the current audience is predominantly young people who are interested in arts and culture, and grew up with television in their lives. A common response we get from viewers and artists alike is that they miss how the era of cable and public access television felt. They all have their own (sometimes very personal) memories of what that means to them, but the feeling is the thing that sticks. Those are the people whose feedback matters most to us. So when they’ve said “I like the branding” or “I would like to know what is playing,” or whatever, those things that they gravitate towards are the things we want to interpret to better understand how we serve our audience. However, I would also hope that the audience continues growing outside of just young people! More geysers for NYTV please!! We will literally bring back Julia Child for you!!!

How have you been using Are.na for NYTV?

KL: We currently use our fledgling Are.na profile to add interesting random videos to our master ‘Loop’ playlist. We’ve opened up this channel to sort of act as a silent easter-egg pitch room if you want to add something. I also really enjoy just clicking Explore > Blocks > Embed and seeing all the videos… it’s not a dissimilar experience to the wee hours of our broadcast.

NYTV has been running recordings of Are.na’s past Channel Walkthrough events, with a brand new season forthcoming. Become a member to watch past shows on demand, and stay tuned for more NYTV x Are.na news this summer.

Featured Channel: Are.na Frames in the Wild

In April, we partnered with Kiran Scott de Martinville to release the Are.na Frame, an open-source e-ink display that brings Are.na channels into the physical world. We put a limited edition of the frames, hand-assembled by Kiran, in the Are.na Gift Shop and they sold out in a matter of hours, though Kiran also put together some instructions so you can assemble one yourself.

Since then, people have been adding photos of their frames and the channels displayed in Kiran’s channel “Are.na Frames in the wild.” Very fun to see everyone’s frames in their natural habitats! When we interviewed Kiran for Are.na Editorial about the frame and his personal practice of “physical technology,” he said:

“Having the Frame integrated with Are.na really opens up the possibilities. I have a friend who has a pair and uses them with their long-distance partner to share images of their lives. I’d also love to make a billboard-sized one connected to an open channel, so anyone walking past could add something, though I’m sure we’d end up seeing some wild images.”

Find the Are.na Frame at Body Shop in Sausalito, California, at KINDRED Radio in London, and elsewhere — and add your own — in this channel.

Are.na Classifieds

Cortney is seeking a local (NYC) risograph sponsor for the beloved Mail Blog, a free series sent in the mail, now in its 7th year. The sponsor would ideally either print the issues or offer up time for Cortney to come by and use the riso. Credit will include name, press, or print shop (etc.) in the issue, like the sponsors on a NASCAR race car. Interested? Contact: mailblog@mailbox.org

Rodrigo is seeking people on Are.na who know about buttons. There are a few hardware projects that Rodrigo wants to bring to life — a computer for kids, an audio computer that's something between an iPod and a Brian Eno album, a handheld game console, and more — and they require some knowledge about buttons. Can you help? Comment on this block.

Miaoye has anointed this summer the Summer of Obsessions and is seeking 1) to know what everyone’s current obsessions are, 2) to be taught something new by those obsessions, and/or 3) to find someone to be mutually obsessed with! (which would start with going on a date with in NYC). Get in touch with Miaoye at: fieldguide.to.obsession@proton.me.

Upcoming Events

Channel Surfing with Chrissy Brimmage and Matthew Flores

This Sunday, June 7, Channel Surfing returns, the online event series in which Firuza Huseynova invites two of her favorite Are.na members to showcase a channel. This time the guests are Chrissy Brimmage and Matthew Flores and the theme is FRICTION — i.e. technological (in)efficiency, neo-Luddism, cognitive offloading, convenience culture, and more. RSVP here for a Zoom link.

“From Earth to Sky” with Triple Canopy

On Wednesday, June 10, join us for “From Earth to Sky,” a collaborative presentation by Triple Canopy and Are.na on the “natural” metaphors for the internet. Technologists, artists, and writers Becca Abbe, Ingrid Burrington, Lai Yi Ohlsen, and Ruby Justice Thelot will interrogate the metaphorical language surrounding the internet and investigate what these metaphors reveal about the historical, political, and cultural contexts in which they became popular. The event is at Triple Canopy’s offices in New York, doors open at 6:30pm, the talks start at 7pm — RSVP here and get there early!

“No Ego: Collaged Approaches and Combinatorial Methods” with Sara Magenheimer

On Saturday, July 11, we’re collaborating with artist, writer, and educator Sara Magenheimer to hold a workshop on various techniques and modes of working designed to remove ego and transcend common blocks to creativity. Participants will look toward uncreative methods borrowed from creative histories across artistic mediums and leave with a toolkit for how to incorporate them into their own processes. The workshop will be held at Index Space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn — official announcement and registration coming next week!

Company and Community News

The big news lately is around the new version (v3) of our API. You can find our documentation here and much more about our API and our philosophy behind it in this piece on Are.na Editorial.

Recently we had an API / Developer Meetup at Index Space in New York, in which we showcased the new structure and discussed some brand new functionality. We also opened the floor for people to demo their own projects using Are.na’s API, including: Maxwell Neely-Cohen’s Correspondence Chess Viewer, turtlekiosk’s in-progress native Android app, and Michael Guidetti’s Are.na Multiplexer.

Jessie Char also sent us her custom baby registry that she made using the Are.na API. Gift ideas come from this channel and here it is on Github.

We also recently caught wind of Blake Shao’s Are.na Cube, a cube-based navigation for blocks and channels.

And finally, Ultralight School is open once again for summer session, starting with its Sense to Sense writing and publication class, this year held online. Learn more about the class in the link above and apply (before June 15) here.

Look out for the next issue of Are.na Community Newspaper in your inboxes in the coming months.

yours in wonder,

The Are.na Team