*archived from medium, published on 14th November 2020
I tried earlier in 2015 when I logged into Dropbox Paper on receiving an early invite. Today I do it again as a reaction to Hans Ulrich Obrist Instagram in-progress thread of artists and their unrealized ideas. His mandate for pursuing the mandate is based on a complaint, of sorts, that architects have a model to showcase their unrealized ideas, while artists haven’t made any space to conceptualize failure.
Evernote too upgraded into some version today. It’s got a dark mode now, but it kinda feels like Paper of then. It is very likable but that is a feeling you have to resist at a certain point. There is a very beta vibe to it. I can’t seem to find any specific happiness navigating the newnessness. Several older features are missing and some may take time to implement. Most of the note-taking app reviews medium AI recommends throws at me are all Evernotehate.
I intermittently hold sessions to review work or ideas I have started or keep track of things I have learned from doing certain activities for a period of time ideally as a progress update or see where I can go with it. I feel I keep making these lists to feel control but always they end up getting out of control. And I start all over again. Thinking in lists is a method of work, whose’ origins from when I started in architecture I am unable to ascertain.
The fault in Obrist’s premise _ We know a lot about architects’ unrealized projects because whether they win or lose competitions they usually publish the work. Very often even if a project isn’t built, it is shown. _ is that it assumes an unbuilt architectural projection is an unrealized pursuit. A complete set of drawings for a project or a clarified set of views for a spatial solution we, most architects, consider them realized when it's published or recognized.
I would like to focus energies on using only a specific set of note-taking apps. What modern blogging platforms did when it came about, in around 2012ish, they made drafts into notes. This made wanting to write more pleasurable as an activity but as a fallout, those who get too many ideas ended up having notes in different and several locations. Early days on the PC were all about different Word files then I started using OneNote in 2007.
I have lost quite a number of OneNote notebooks along the way, but note-taking became part of the workflow when everyone and me, thought Evernote was the best thing to happen to us. I preferred it on the laptop instead of the phone. It also encouraged the hoarding of things that previously were discarded or thrown away. Trying out different notetaking apps too has taken a bit of a toll. Of late I am taking it on me to let myself go of various productivity apps.
The question I am trying to address like Obrist is how do I go about completing, several of the ideas that I began work on but didn’t end up doing anything about. The difference between an incomplete/ failed architectural idea and a published one is that one has got potential in changing form into something while the other generally stagnate. Is there a necessity in going back into the architectural archive to bring closure to lost projects or let a past be forgotten with the failures of the time?
There are three ways I deal with lists. Either, it's just a list, or there is a description that introduces the collection of items listed, or an analysis of the things listed tries to derive a conclusion. I have never tried dismantling a list. Learning taken from the Evernote update is its attempt in debloating itself by shedding some of its features and focusing only on note-taking. Deleting one note at a time and rediscovering a 2002 windows folder listing may hold answers to finishing projects instead of making notes about completing them. An attempt in dismantling, I guess here.
#extra
Everything began for me as a teenager, visiting the studios of artists. It is still what I do today.
The thing about artistic practices is, they don’t grow up. They end up repeating the same set of ideas in different ways till either they are recognised or become insignificant. In that sense methodologies, systems, or frameworks of work also don’t change or evolve. They only end upscaling or transferred from one context to another always shown or seen in different lights.