By Mit Mitropoulos, Galaxidi, Delphi Municipality, Greece June 2025 (This text follows my verbal response to Dimitra Kouzi’s request, which she filmed this morning in my Kavos studio, as part of her documentary on ARNode. I am writing this text as if I am addressing her live).

ARNode process is a pleasure to me re-visiting good people or baddies, occasions, discoveries, conflicts, failures, the warmth of teamwork, working on hopeful futures.
It is a context for me to make new connections of old concepts to works in different discipline platforms. Of concepts like Space as a Network, or the worn out Together/Separate, valid for my exchange with the nude girl I am drawing. And/or with communication at a distance, see the F2F series. And/or when I design articulations of space—architecture as such is present, but peripheral. Such connections may be separated in Time, or by Geography itself.
For this purpose I have been compiling 5 Guides. Guide-1 is a project that can serve as model to big scale environmental artworks using communications technology, an AST (Art-Science- Technology) prototype. Guide-2 uses as a spine, the series of EIKASTIKA 3/1983 to 3/1986 publications(a visual arts review in Greece, running on 5.000 each month) I contributed to instead of exhibiting works, and occasionally physically intervening whether with a razor-sharp obsidian piece, or sticking on one specific page the 2-monitors stamp (5.000 of them). Guide-3 uses as spine the series of papers in the Alzheimer’s Thessaloniki conferences (and the as many recorded verbal presentations—in the 9,5 years acting as caretaker for my mother hit by memory degeneration). Guide-4 Vol I uses as spine the long series of my Ekistics publications (editor extraordinary Psomopoulos) over the 49 years I have related to that Doxiadis group. Guide-4 Vol II and Guide-5 focusing on Islands, have been delayed due to my Intestinal Obstruction medical urgency—material for them is ready and waiting for me. The Guides are interdisciplinary, for instance in one Guide-2 visual arts review, we use the Space as a Network Environmental Psychology concept in the hands-on example for a MCA (Museum of Contemporary Arts) in downtown Athens—a presentation to the Pantion conference, organized by SYST, late 1970s. The Guides are re-visiting the Past, towards possible Futures, meaning neither Dystopian terrors nor Utopian wishful thinking.
ARNode process is pursuing work as if I am of age 30, and operating on longterm planning. It is for staying useful after I am gone, for instance see Notations for Complex Urban Systems. Or doing proposals that can be carried out in the future, upgraded versions of them (like D-Line ,or Sundown)—I also enjoy looking back, for instance on the 14th c. and asking what Galaxidi was really like, or, what aesthetics did people go by at the time. Or being modest and going back just for 60 years, back to 1966, having just passed the Academie entrance exams (cramming the official 2 years preparing for them, into 2 months flat—no kidding) and off to NYNY acting as translator on the Groote Beer liner, then back to Galaxidi till the end of summer, then return to Brussels for the Aca Royale 1966-7 academic year. This ARNode process stands also as a Delaying Mechanism, to delay (if not to avoid altogether) a possible memory degeneration: I am working on my Cognitive Reserves— that saved my mother, as she had plenty of them (see Guide-3).
Besides Questions you may have to ask me, whilst re-visiting, a few items get highlighted, prioritise themselves, stand out, like with Complexities, Preference to paper v. off the screen, Choices made over time, and Joys of a daily researcher’s schedule. Complexity keeps coming up, what with our capacity to adapt(to unavoidable changes), the incoming messages over distance, the growing number of choices over a longer life, and with over half of the planet’s pptn gone urban in the last decade—the latter bringing up the need of Notations I used for my 1971 Academie finals (they refused me to do my presentatioin,only to adopt a partial version 20 years later, named ‘Architecture Urbaine’). I do keep reading the Weekend FT and Kathimerini newspapers + keeping notes on the margins. Furthermore, I have observed how those running on an off the screen lifestyle leads to ‘Response People’,participating either as Opposers creating a ,lively debate fit for coffee houses,or as Followers contributing additional material they retrieve from tapping their tablet. Having to make a choice, it appears I run on two criteria: I don t want to become rich, and I don t care if I am not popular. Finally, I get intoxicated locating common denominators in disciplines I grew up with as separate by decisions useful, yet arbitrary: see AST, starting with the Art v. Science divide (and the joy of setting up and running the Edinburgh U course BAS (Basic Architectural Space). Same with sticking to (or re-discovering) ways I had worked out as a green student, like sleep on a problem (and letting the brain tackle it) rather than stay awake working for a solution. Same with ‘learning from the environment’ what with relevant events happening (and getting instant updates), and checking on irrelevant Found printed matter, when by reading a report/opinion, my brain somehow triggered and deals with subject matter relevant to me.
Same with checking I may be wrong in assuming work on the SN Notations was wasting my time (see the CAD that took over keeping the design process the same, only faster). But it was such fun doing it (and got me a Ph.D in the process), and I stayed in good company as it so happened: Phil Thiel, Don Appleyard, Kev Lynch, Brian Goodey, CA Trevarthen, and more good people.

Question: Am I wrong in assuming that the Pantion University conference paper MCA As A Network, introduced the Networks concept in the broader cultural (scientific and visuals arts) milieu in Greece? No credits received, but it is only natural in our No Credits Culture country: at the time I was teaching with the Thessaloniki Aristotelian U, where the assistant prof responded to my request to add a Bibliography to his paper, was “Knowledge does not belong to those creating it but to the people”— AVGI newspaper of the Left (of quality at that time) would not print Bibliographies (a rule overturned with my early 1980s full page presentation of using comms/info technologies to create networks made up of Aegean Sea islands as nodes).

Note: I will limit myself to one of your Qs “What is a Network to you?” Answer: A Network is made up of variable number of Nodes, each Node acting at same time both as Center and Periphery

Thank you Dimitra for having me.

(the links in the text are edited by Dimitra Kouzi) more about Mit Mitropoulos here

The following is Dimitra Kouzi’s text in preparation for filming us both (Mit and herself) (on June 4, 2025), in an exchange toward’s defining ARNode

ARNode is one Research Center-Node within ever-changing Networks. It addresses artists, scientists and researchers who may wish to pursue Mit’s interdisciplinary work(on on-going concepts, or on packaged tools ready for eventual use), all on the AST (Art-Science-Technology) platform. At the core of his lifework stands Communications, both with and without technology, and the initial concept of Space as a Network (rather than as Place). ARNode is physically located in Galaxidi (Delphi Municipality), Greece, a place for reflection into possible futures. At this moment in the ARNode process, he is considering- exploring possible legal structures, whilst organising his archive, and reviewing-updating-prioritising his body of work: he is creating new material.

Το ARNode είναι ένα Ερευνητικό Κεντρο-Κόμβος μέσα σε συνεχώς διαμορφούμενα Δίκτυα. Αφορά καλλιτέχνες , επιστήμονες και ερευνητές που θα θελήσουν να δώσουν συνέχειες στην διεπιστημονική δουλειά του Μιτ Μητρόπουλου (έννοιες διαχρονικές , ή συγκεκριμένα εργαλεία έτοιμα για μελλοντικές χρήσεις), πάνω στην πλατφορμα AST (Τέχνη- Επιστήμη-Τεχνολογία). Στο επίκεντρο της εργασίας του είναι οι Επικοινωνίες με ή χωρίς τεχνολογία, και η αρχική έννοια Χώρος σαν Δίκτυο (αντί σαν Τόπος). Η φυσική παρουσία του ARNode είναι το Γαλαξείδι (Δήμος Δελφών), ένας χώρος διαλογισμού για εφικτές μελλοντικές χρονικές περιόδους. Στην σημερινή περίοδο διαδικασιας ARNode, ο Μιτ εξετάζει την νομική-ιδρυματοποιημένη μορφή, ενώ οργανώνει το αρχείο του, επισκέπτεται-επικαιροποιεί-προτεραιοποιεί την δουλειά μιας ζωής: δημιουργεί νέο υλικό.