I love capturing simple moments. Different generations. Ordinary people living ordinary lives. Without pretense or gloss. That evening I wasn’t thinking about the value of the frame. I just met people and pressed the shutter button.
It’s these kinds of shots that teach you to appreciate the moment. I open the photograph I took that summer evening and think about them. Some are gone. Someone got distracted by something trivial. Someone is going through a crisis or walking into the fog toward a dream, feeling the brass of life and unaware of the coming storms and cliffs.
It’s not about another lucky “shot” for social media. It’s about attention. Despite the noise and the world’s overindulgence, to notice something simple and alive.
Recently I stumbled upon the idea of liveness (see “Liveness” by Venkatesh Rao). I think it’s better to approach such ideas gradually — to let them unfold and notice how they echo in reality. I’m not yet sure it fits here, but I’ll see later. For now — a small step in that direction.
Why do modern trolleybuses have LED strips running along the windows? Stylish? Fresh?
I don’t think good design has to be invisible — but it depends on where we apply it.
In a Mercedes or a Tesla, that kind of lighting works: motion, speed, space as an extension of yourself — dynamic, successful, hair blowing in the wind, your favorite song playing — welcome to the future!
Meanwhile, somewhere in an unheated office of a design department, a cheerful young designer proudly presents his project, pointing out all the stylish details. The designer has done his job well: the task was to make the trolleybus interior modern. Time to issue a bonus — and maybe a long-awaited can of government-issued condensed milk, as a reward for obedience.
Light for show, not for life
But let’s go back to the trolleybus. Dirt, slush, sleepy people coming back from work. This “freshness” feels out of place here, and it only highlights the gray reality. Practical use? Only if the lights help you find what you dropped, or notice that your shoes are covered in chemical slush. Venkatesh Rao has a notion called “liveness” — when a thing truly lives instead of pretending. In public transport, it’s the kind of light that helps you see and read, clear signs, comfortable handles — things that serve people and, over time, become part of the route’s history, its continuation. It turns out that this lighting isn’t a continuation of the story but a glitch: an element that carries nothing forward on its own. I’m not even talking about the fact that the LED strips will need replacing soon — knowing the quality of things around here, that’ll have to happen very soon. Will anyone bother? Of course not.
Yes, we need progress. Of course things should improve, become more beautiful and relevant. But when we create, it’s important to consider context, to find the link between past and future, and to have the courage to say “No” to everything unnecessary.
In 2022 my friends and I created a small men’s Telegram chat. A private place where you could drop something interesting, share news, arrange meetings, or argue, finally. We launched it during one of our gatherings in Minsk — spontaneously, in just a couple of minutes. There were no ideas for a name. Why not just put a fruit emoji 🍑 instead of text? Perfect.
For three years we didn’t touch or change anything. It worked well enough. This year I decided to play with the group’s visual identity using AI. The task was simple: to pull the peach out of the emoji world into reality.
First I drew our main character. Now it’s an image you can use as an avatar, send to friends, print, and even hang in a frame.
Peach — the main symbol of our chat
This is what our fruit chat now looks like
But of course I didn’t stop there. I created a boyfriend for our peach so it wouldn’t be lonely. After all, it’s good when fruits have friends.
Summer. City center. Clouds are gathering. In this charged moment something incomprehensible and beautiful gazes at me. People take shelter in the metro’s underground or, like moths, hurry toward the mall’s bright shop windows. No one notices the solemnity and purity of this unseen power.
We live at the junction of two systems: bodies have biorhythms and breath; servers have timestamps and uptime. The intersection of worlds is not a compromise but an interface, a place where human attention meets machine protocol. It is important to be fluent in the language of feeling and the language of systems. Silence is not a pause but a medium; the algorithm is not a judge but a tool. Meaning is a signal that passes through noise without losing the human dimension.
Design not for retention but for free will. Choose depth over reach. Recognize friction as part of the protocol, not a bug. Mark boundaries and sources, especially when AI is involved. Transparency is the new ethical minimum. Build small protocols that return agency: rituals of attention, careful maps instead of total pictures of the world. Publish not “truth forever” but careful diffs, checkpoints in the evolution of thought.
The intersection of worlds is a place where the system can be rebooted. Here we fix the initial conditions: first the body, then the tool; first reality, then the model. Between heart and circuit, between voice and code, the protocol preserves the full spectrum of the signal, including feeling.
✨ This text was written in dialogue with the machine. Here, AI acted as a proofreader, a mirror, and a conversation partner. I formulated the idea, and it helped to expand it: suggested new angles, brought order, connected parts, and clarified the line of reasoning. The voice remains mine. More in the AI usage policy.
