thinking with mastodon backups
experiment-create-reflect
9 July 2025 13:09 PLANNING. Workflows are now an integral part of any creative process since digital automation is the skill of the times to pickup. If the making of architecture is a workflow in two parts, of art and science, the hypothesis in updating the process is art, plan, design, and engineer extended by construction, participation, education, and documentation. The compiling of this erratic set is to build an outline leading towards a theme for the project, which is “The Form of Observation”. For this experiment, there is no singular larger narrative the list builds on. A sketch is what I leave you with.
28 Nov 2022, 20:23. PLANNING. “What is on my mind?”, this is the note that stares at you when you being your thinking about what you want to post on Mastodon. As there are these days too many sites to build an audience, keeping up consistency is always a problem. Daily writing has faltered. 300 words didn’t quite work right. You could say it worked, but it didn’t at the same time. What are 500 characters and how long it takes me to spurt out something is this test. From daily journaling to maybe daily, I don’t know what it is called here, daily 500-character posts. This, thus, is my introduction.
28 Nov 2022, 20:49. DESIGN. Mastodon is a very anti consumption-centric platform. All you get is a window of characters allotted by algorithms, to dump thoughts that translate into words. If I can compare it with some other apps that I have tried out in the past, the closest is Tumblr. It has almost the same blue. Instead of a central writing experience, I am left with this little corner. This phase by Jisoo, quoted in all occasions, “It’s not bad, but not good.” Coming from three hundred words daily, five hundred character posts seem better.
29 Nov, 17:37 ART. Writing with images should have some kind of recognition. It is called graphic novels in some situations, but there must be other ways to do it. If a picture is a thousand words, then a combination of text and images is worth much more. This, I confess, is lazy logic. I have a ton of images to look at while at the same spurt out a lot of words. Just like the image, irrespective of its form, is an idea, every block of text is similar. Mastodon writing should be a genre.
29 Nov, 17:39. ENGINEERING. So I got my first notification here on the last (Monday) of November 2022. It came with a nice pop which confused me and left me searching. Living here is not very intuitive. Pardon my complaints, but these are the thoughts in my head. I wish writing could happen right in the centre, like everywhere. I want to add a fun image to (Fotomontag) but that one doesn’t upload. So what I should have posted is left to your imagination. There are no distractions here, which is nice.
29 Nov, 12:13. ENGINEERING. I write on several internet platforms. None has worked out consistently. Twitter I tried in the early days, but today it is more of a chat to have and track conversations on subjects. Communities such as (ship30for30) do help, as do keying out three hundred words daily. The greater the number of words, the better the opportunity to play with ideas, but limits as presented are challenges to work with. That you can look at what you wrote before while a note is in production is zen. These, I opine for now.
29 Nov, 17:39. ART. There aren’t many things possible with images here. Thinking with images is also a dated concept since it doesn’t keep you engaged with them for long. In a museum, the same image on the wall, even if it is a print, in the right conditions can solicit a very different set of reactions. In passing, doom-scrolling everything is a blur. With generative A.I. to be recognised as someone who knows what the service is all about, everyday public experiments is a requirement.
29 Nov, 17:40 ART. Featured hashtags are an interesting concept. I can now track which of the five themes I have written most on and toggle the intensity on the numbers and which ones my thought directs into. Writing about images differs significantly from images that are written. If that makes sense. Landscape architecture can come under both (architecture) and (planning). Twitter 2.0 for writing as 500characters. Rather than a set of sentences, you now must have a complete thought to put out. More time invested for less return.
29 Nov, 11:47. This is now actual (architecture) thinking. I have a web activity tracker that says it’s been two hours since I stayed on this site. I must point out that it is a combination of the bird site and here. Two distinct spaces of thought connected through a portal we call the browser. Architecture of the past is a co-ordinating profession. Now, in time, A.I. is refactoring everything we have understood as the domain until now. Continuous public discussion of what can eventually co-ordinated towards building.
29 Nov, 17:41. ART. I have been collecting images for a while now. My folders go back to 2008. The time when Twitter got really popular. Obama election time. Then on the site, people sent out tweets, i.e. public text messages. Today it is possible to think on a similar scale even on Facebook or maybe even TikTok if someone did actually try that. It is commendable if Mastodon, this server, doesn’t change. A steady stream archives material and ideas as another social feed.
16 Jul, 16:47. PLANNING. I got a few bots to review this text; they were not very positive. I’ve proofread it twice and see no major problems, but the thoughts remain disorganized. Tweeting is not the same as Mastodon posting; neither is the same as writing almost A.I. generated “member only” clickbait essays. Publishing on Kindle is a ginormous workflow of its own. I was hoping it could make a volume of its own when they reached around 192 in number, but I am going to hold on to that idea for another edition. They aren’t outstanding pieces of texts to unpack but there are ideas which could build into something sometime later.
