about “life is a garden”
9/26/25
it has now been a few months since planting the first seeds in my online garden. it is surreal to see what it has grown to be!
i recently stumbled upon this again. j.r. carpenter’s site was introduced to me while taking httpoetics at the school for poetic computation back in 2024, when i was still living in honolulu. she describes the handmade web:
☆ “I evoke the term 'handmade web' to refer to web pages coded by hand rather than by software; web pages made and maintained by individuals rather than by businesses or corporations; web pages which are provisional, temporary, or one-of-a-kind; web pages which challenge conventions of reading, writing, design, ownership, privacy, security, or identity.”
though i am quite shit at coding, i found that the value of a website was not in the thrills and frills of complicated css or javascript, but rather, in the care and love one pours into it.
the internet has been co-opted by commerce. because of this, maintaining a site for the sake of de-monetized pleasure, maintaining a site for the hell of it initially felt superfulous. with the server and domain fees, i roughly spend $300 a year on maintaining this site, which is kind of a lot for me.
i figured there are worse things i could spend my money on. there are worse things i do spend my money on.
i remember when i bought the ayakatakao.com domain for the first time. it happened right when i was about to finish undergrad, sitting in bokeum’s room during my thesis preperations. i probably had about $300 in my checking account at the time. she said it was an investment that was worth making, that i was a real artist that deserved a real website. i wasn’t 100% convinced, but i followed the small particles of myself that believed.
it felt synonmous to buying a designer handbag. was this really me? do i deserve this? what business do i have, owning something like this?
before having the ayakatakao.com domain, i’ve used cargo since high school, initially using it for posting film photos. it has evolved since. the site is an old friend who has watched me grow over the years.
there is a decade worth of data and pages stored in the back end of this site. there are years worth of evolutions in my artistic practice, all roaming like friendly spirits in the server that holds all the data for this domain.
i have loved the internet for as long as i have had access. from neopets to myspace, from club penguin to tumblr, from wikipedia surfing to my first encounter with the dark web, i have been online for as long as i remember. many friendships were made in cyberspace, maintained long distance through a virtual connection. many crushes were observed here, too. the internet is a place i have always come to find connection.
at a workshop with toby shorin at index space for his book other internet 2018-2024, we reflected on the internet’s evolution, exploring why we use it, why we created it in the first place.
my personal conviction is: the internet is a mirror. the internet is inhabited by humans and our aspirational selves, our shadow-y shelves, all these fragmented messy & beautiful parts of our selves. the internet is a mirror of our society, a mirror that reflects back our desperate need for love.
so, with that conviction, having this website divorced from commerce is consistent with my belief systems.
it doesn’t have to be “optimal”. my site can often be illegible, unfriendly to the user, not on purpose; i’m still just learning. i’m enjoying the journey. this site is a practice of active failure and exploration. i am having fun.
it has now been a few months since planting the first seeds in my online garden. it is surreal to see what it has grown to be!
i recently stumbled upon this again. j.r. carpenter’s site was introduced to me while taking httpoetics at the school for poetic computation back in 2024, when i was still living in honolulu. she describes the handmade web:
☆ “I evoke the term 'handmade web' to refer to web pages coded by hand rather than by software; web pages made and maintained by individuals rather than by businesses or corporations; web pages which are provisional, temporary, or one-of-a-kind; web pages which challenge conventions of reading, writing, design, ownership, privacy, security, or identity.”
though i am quite shit at coding, i found that the value of a website was not in the thrills and frills of complicated css or javascript, but rather, in the care and love one pours into it.
the internet has been co-opted by commerce. because of this, maintaining a site for the sake of de-monetized pleasure, maintaining a site for the hell of it initially felt superfulous. with the server and domain fees, i roughly spend $300 a year on maintaining this site, which is kind of a lot for me.
i figured there are worse things i could spend my money on. there are worse things i do spend my money on.
i remember when i bought the ayakatakao.com domain for the first time. it happened right when i was about to finish undergrad, sitting in bokeum’s room during my thesis preperations. i probably had about $300 in my checking account at the time. she said it was an investment that was worth making, that i was a real artist that deserved a real website. i wasn’t 100% convinced, but i followed the small particles of myself that believed.
it felt synonmous to buying a designer handbag. was this really me? do i deserve this? what business do i have, owning something like this?
before having the ayakatakao.com domain, i’ve used cargo since high school, initially using it for posting film photos. it has evolved since. the site is an old friend who has watched me grow over the years.
there is a decade worth of data and pages stored in the back end of this site. there are years worth of evolutions in my artistic practice, all roaming like friendly spirits in the server that holds all the data for this domain.
i have loved the internet for as long as i have had access. from neopets to myspace, from club penguin to tumblr, from wikipedia surfing to my first encounter with the dark web, i have been online for as long as i remember. many friendships were made in cyberspace, maintained long distance through a virtual connection. many crushes were observed here, too. the internet is a place i have always come to find connection.
at a workshop with toby shorin at index space for his book other internet 2018-2024, we reflected on the internet’s evolution, exploring why we use it, why we created it in the first place.
my personal conviction is: the internet is a mirror. the internet is inhabited by humans and our aspirational selves, our shadow-y shelves, all these fragmented messy & beautiful parts of our selves. the internet is a mirror of our society, a mirror that reflects back our desperate need for love.
so, with that conviction, having this website divorced from commerce is consistent with my belief systems.
it doesn’t have to be “optimal”. my site can often be illegible, unfriendly to the user, not on purpose; i’m still just learning. i’m enjoying the journey. this site is a practice of active failure and exploration. i am having fun.
7/16/25
☆ “The self as a puzzle: to be deciphered… the self as a project: to be built” [source unknown].
ripped from joan watson’s notes on art historical combines
☆ “Writing has nothing to do with signifying. It has to do with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come.”
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p 25
life is a garden to be nutured, to be conscious of. to sit in, to dig. to unearth, to weed and till. 🌿
this rhizome, like all, is layered, messy. sometimes it’s even fun! sometimes it’s boring!
“life is a garden” is an active exercise of contextualizing my practice through a web of personal memory and peripheral history.
this section of my website will be a constant work in progress, date and timestamped at the bottom whenever changes are made. sometimes it’ll be a little hard to read. that is the nature of it all: its a W.I.P.! enjoy :)
ripped from joan watson’s notes on art historical combines
☆ “Writing has nothing to do with signifying. It has to do with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come.”
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p 25
life is a garden to be nutured, to be conscious of. to sit in, to dig. to unearth, to weed and till. 🌿
this rhizome, like all, is layered, messy. sometimes it’s even fun! sometimes it’s boring!
“life is a garden” is an active exercise of contextualizing my practice through a web of personal memory and peripheral history.
this section of my website will be a constant work in progress, date and timestamped at the bottom whenever changes are made. sometimes it’ll be a little hard to read. that is the nature of it all: its a W.I.P.! enjoy :)
write to me!
★ email: ayaka333takao@gmail.com
last edited 9/26/25