Kazys Varnelis, Ph.D. conducts transdisciplinary research and practice. A historian of architecture, he is also an artist, curator, and designer. He is the Director of the Network Architecture Lab and co-principal of AUDC.
This morning, Substack announced that it would be integrating Pangram scans to detect AI content in its posts. I wanted to spend my day revising a chapter of my next book, and later this week, I was thinking of writing a post on the “Memex” I have created using plugins for Zotero and Obsidian that I have coded using ... Read more The post On Substack and AI appeared first on varnelis.net .
I have forty-four long-form posts since 2019 for your reading pleasure below, but perhaps you’d like to read a few words on how they came to be first? I am happier writing for myself than I ever was writing for anyone else (although I will do that again, too, in case you have an interesting ... Read more The post Forty-Four PDFs, 2019-2026 appeared first on varnelis.net .
It’s strange to measure every year against a concept developed by a science fiction writer, but William Gibson’s line “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed”1. has been my north star for my recent year-in-review essays. Gibson meant that the future was unevenly distributed by class: the wealthy receive high-tech healthcare while the ... Read more The post 2025-in-review…
I was saddened to hear that Robert A. M. Stern passed away on Thanksgiving. I had the privilege of working with Bob on The Philip Johnson Tapes. Those aren’t idle words: it truly was a privilege.Robert Stern and myself, with martinis. I first met Bob at the Philip Johnson symposium at Yale. I was rather ... Read more The post On Robert A. M. Stern (1939-2025) appeared first on varnelis.net .
This year I am writing much more. I did not set out with another broken promise about writing more. I just started to. It’s curious—when I aimed to write just one essay per month, as I did last year, the task felt daunting. Yet now, averaging one essay a week, I have established a rhythm. ... Read more The post On the State of Things at varnelis.net appeared first on varnelis.net .
I’ve been reading Joan Didion again. She was one of the sharpest chroniclers of the recent past and a master of minimalist style. Legend has it that Bret Easton Ellis, still in high school, copied Slouching Towards Bethlehem by hand (or maybe on a typewriter) to absorb the rhythm of her sentences. Unlike Didion, I ... Read more The post The City and the Fog appeared first on varnelis.net .
I have been writing “Years in Review” for some time. I often wonder if it’s worth it. I don’t get as much feedback as on my other posts and they take time away from other work. Still, these are useful for me to look at over the years, so for this year at least, I ... Read more The post 2024 in review appeared first on varnelis.net .
It happens that it’s my birthday today and if you look at the Collected Writings of Robert Smithson, you will see that his Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey took place on that date, in fact on my birthdate, September 20, 1967. That date is in error. The real date was September 30, ... Read more The post On the potential of Passaic appeared first on varnelis.net .
On Thursday, July 25, the Šiuolaikinio Meno Centras [Contemporary Art Centre] in Vilnius, Lithuania will reopen after a three-year-long renovation project. As part of the ten-day long “Days of Re-Entry” programme, the CAC is presenting an audio exhibit entitled “Memories of the Walls,” by Antanas Dombrovskij that will include sounds from past exhibits at the ... Read more The post Perkūnas, 2024…
Our cat Roxy passed away three weeks ago, early on Sunday, April 14. She had been ill for a while, but it was still a shock. Three of us were in Tokyo while our daughter Viltis was at Bard College, studying. We had put Roxy in the care of a wonderful veterinary nurse who works ... Read more The post Roxy, a small life appeared first on varnelis.net .