Areal, iOS updates, website launch with O-R-G and Dia, and more
Hi, how are you?
Welcome to the first day of fall. We’re a company of fall lovers, so it feels extra special to be able to say that to you.
We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire, a lot to be excited about between now and the end of the year.
What have you been thinking about? What are you listening to?
New iOS app available for testing
We’re continuing to roll out updates for the iOS app, and those on the Premium Supporter tier are continuing to enjoy them. If you can’t tell, we’re really really excited about the new app. It has changed our use of Are.na on the phone (for the better) — it’s nice to be able to look up channels quickly, add to them, and spend quality time with the things that we’ve saved.
If you’d like to get early access to the new iOS app, consider upgrading to the Supporter tier.
Website Launch with O-R-G and Dia Beacon
If you’re in New York, come join us this Wednesday to mark the launch of arena-momentum.org. Developed and designed by David Reinfurt (O-R-G) and Charles Broskoski (Are.na), the live/archive website comes out of Arena Momentum, two years of events at Dia Beacon that ran inside of and parallel to an exhibition of the same name by Rita McBride.
Momentum was initiated by Rita McBride with experimental performance collective discoteca flaming star (founded by Cristina Gomez Barrio and Wolfgang Mayer) and artist and choreographer Alexandra Waierstall.
The website is hosted on a series of Are.na channels and runs on a schedule generated daily. The schedule ensures that every visitor to the site views the same material at the same time.
Life-sized projections and blue drinks will be offered in the O-R-G basement studio. Hope to see you there!
What:
Launch of arena-momentum.org, a project from O-R-G, Are.na, and Dia Beacon
When:
Wednesday, September 24
6 - 8pm
Where:
O-R-G
38 Ludlow Street, Basement
New York, NY 10002
Introducing Areal, Are.na’s New Typeface
Last month we started using our new typeface, Areal, custom-made by our friends at the design studio Dinamo. Areal is a “revival” of Arial (our previous typeface), entirely redrawn and rebuilt from the ground up.
We’re excited about Areal because Dinamo’s revival is extremely well done and designed to be especially tailored for Are.na. We’re also excited by the process and the thinking behind the project, which we get into in an interview with Dinamo’s Johannes Breyer on Are.na Editorial.
You can find more about the project and the impetus behind it at are.al.are.na/.
Contribute to Pools of Words
Every year we have a “community element” for the Are.na Annual, our yearly print anthology, in which everyone on Are.na has the opportunity to participate, and this year Sara Magenheimer has created a collaborative text that we would love you all to contribute to.
The project lives on pool-of-words.are.na and functions essentially like a Mad Libs. Sara wrote questions to solicit verbs, nouns and adjectives — once you answer these, they will fill in the blanks in her beautifully sensorial and absurd story “How to Seasons.” Your answers will also auto-populate a series of channels on Are.na. Next month, Sara will choose from the words in these channels to complete a final version of the text, which will run (credited) in the Are.na Annual, out in December.
Press
Last week, Are.na CEO Charles Broskoski spoke at the design conference POV Budapest about Are.na and tuning your radar to the things that catch your interest. In a write-up of the conference in Tasty Magazine, Nimisha Gupta wrote, “Are.na keeps reminding me that design can protect attention, hold nuance, and make spaciousness a feature rather than an absence. It’s a trunk for ideas, a place to keep fragments until a pattern appears.”
Charles also participated in Panels Season 02, a series of conversations hosted by Modem and moderated by Emily Segal. The series explores how technology is reshaping and reimagining the infrastructures we depend on, and Charles talked about “Reclaiming the Platform” with Emily and ISOLARII’s Sebastian Clark.
Community
Tommy Trinh organized an Are.na meetup in Toronto at New Stadium which included a demo of the Are.na <> Figma tool (built by 56.digital) and a channel showcase. We have after-the-fact FOMO.
Cory Arcangel was interviewed for a video by the Louisiana Channel about his artistic practice and his life in Stavanger, Norway. Very much worth a watch.
Darrel Kennedy, who runs Blacks of Are.na alongside being a creative producer and brand consultant, was on the podcast Hip Replacement. The full thing is worth listening to, but their first question for Darrel was “What is Are.na?” and she does a really nice job of answering it: “They’re anti-algorithm, that’s one of the best things about Are.na — it’s not just another noisy platform that’s trying to make money off of your attention. They’re great at honoring their values.”
Chris Lange created a website, A-S-C.org (anti-subscription catalogue), that gathers together over 100 non-subscription, free, open-source platforms. It’s a public resource for the creative community, advocating for equitable public access to digital tools.
Roadmap
As always, you can check out our roadmap page which goes into the features we're building, our long-term goals, and our current numbers.
There are so many places you can spend your attention, and we’re touched that you spent it reading this letter.
The Are.na Team