Are.na workshop, product updates, a London meetup, and more
Have you ever heard of staghorn sumac? It’s a type of flowering plant you see a lot in the Northeast United States and Southern Canada. It has these crazy little flowers that look like pinecones.
Anyway, there are some swaying in the breeze within our line of sight, as we write this. It’s summer, but it’s also cool.
We’re listening to Naima by Jack Wilkins and thinking about weeds. What have you been thinking about? What are you listening to?
No Ego: an Are.na workshop
On Saturday, July 11, join us for our first Are.na workshop: No Ego, a one-day session on collaged artistic approaches and combinatorial methods, led by artist Sara Magenheimer.
From David Bowie’s verbasizer to William S. Burrough’s cut-ups to Stan Brackhage’s collage films, John Cage’s prepared piano, and Sheila Heti’s alphabetical prose experiments, No Ego explores how artists employ strategies to dig below the ego and enliven their work with chance and recombination.
Alongside a lecture and discussion, workshop participants will engage in activities drawn from these strategies and leave with resources, prompts, and ideas for incorporating them into their own processes.
Where:
Index Space in Greenpoint
698 Manhattan Ave. Brooklyn, NY
When:
Saturday, July 11
12-4pm
How much:
$250
Register for the workshop via our new RSVP app by July 8.
New on Are.na Editorial
Ahead of No Ego, we ran an interview with Sara Magenheimer on Are.na Editorial about the workshop material, Sara’s teaching experience, and her own approaches to creating intentional accidents in her artistic work.
We also published an interview with artist Stephanie Dinkins about data, memory, and machine learning. Stephanie is receiving an honorary degree from School for Poetic Computation this weekend as part of their annual fundraiser (more on that below).
Product
A few small updates to tell you about:
There’s a new, slightly more nuanced paradigm for adding collaborators to channels. In short, people who aren’t following you will now need to confirm invitations. If you’re interested in learning more, check out this help page.
On iOS we added shortcut actions (add block, take photo, record audio, search) for the lockscreen and control panel.
Also new on iOS: random channel title generator, new UI for audio recording, and an updated settings page.
On the API side, there are new endpoints for groups and feeds.
Last but not least, we’re testing a command palette interface internally, but we’ll release it to people on the supporter tier next. If you’re interested in early access to new features like this, consider upgrading.
Community News
This Saturday and Sunday in New York, SFPC’s Poetic Promenade marks the school’s first large-scale community event and annual fundraiser—reimagining prom and graduation as collective rituals of art, technology, and lifelong learning. We’re very proud to sponsor Chia Amisola’s desktop cinema, an ever-shifting backdrop for the two-day event. Buy tickets to the prom here and get outfit inspiration here.
On Sunday in London there’s an Are.na Summer Solstice Picnic in Hampstead Heath (exact location can be found here). There will be kite-making material and cake — looks really fun.
John-Kyle Mohr wrote a really nice post on our new RSVP app. We especially like this part: “It’s the set of values, principles, and the people who connect them that makes Are.na what it is.”
Sara Magenheimer wrote more on the No Ego workshop for her excellent Substack, X-Votos.
And in case you missed it, we published the second issue of the Are.na Community Newspaper this month. This one features an interview with New York Television, Kiran Scott de Martinville’s channel “Are.na Frames in the Wild,” lots of API projects, and some Are.na Classifieds. Subscribe to the Are.na Editorial newsletter to get the next one.
If you have any news you’d like us to share, feel free to put it in our Community News channel.
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.
Are.na is the people,
The Are.na Team