This project—like the mentorship model it documents—wouldn’t have been possible without belief, support, and partnership.

First and foremost, we thank Sonalika CSR for being our constant sponsor of the A4A Residency program and now supporting its new avatar: the A4A Virtual Residency and Mentorship Program. Their support has been more than just financial — it has been thoughtful, consistent, and deeply aligned with our mission to empower emerging artists across India.

A special note of gratitude to Surbhi Mittal, whose involvement goes far beyond a corporate role. Her care and curiosity — from following up on how the artists are doing, to taking a genuine interest in their journeys — has meant the world to us. Her engagement reminds us that institutional support can be personal, empathetic, and transformative.

With their backing, we’ve been able to build not just programs, but relationships between mentors and mentees, between practice and reflection, and now, between art and infrastructure.

This permacomputing project began during an online course with the Royal College of Art. One of the speakers mentioned Low-Tech Magazine — a solar-powered website hosted on a Raspberry Pi. It served dithered, black-and-white, HTML-only pages. That small, defiant act of digital publishing sparked something in me.

The idea that a website itself could be an artistic and ecological gesture stayed with me. I didn’t want to just write a report — I wanted to host it differently, build it differently, share it differently.

I had no technical background. I wasn’t even sure what a Raspberry Pi was. But I was curious.

I then reached out to Kunal Kalra, who had first introduced me to the idea and encouraged me to try it out. That nudge turned into weeks of tinkering: formatting SD cards, configuring web servers, setting up Lighttpd, losing everything, and starting all over again. Each time I hit a wall, I reached out for help. And each time, someone was there.

Jagadeesh Reddy became my main technical companion — generous with his time, occasionally exasperated by my endless “what does this line mean?” messages, but always willing to dive in with me. We argued over IP configurations, celebrated every successful reboot like a festival, and slowly pieced together a functioning solar-powered server. I learned just enough to break things. He knew just enough to fix them. He built this HTML website.

The content of this site — the report you’ll read — wouldn’t exist without Suparna Aggarwal, who joined the project as a research assistant. After I shared the broad questions I wanted to explore, she helped frame the research's structure. She gathered insights through dipstick surveys and exit interviews, and her clarity of thinking helped shape what eventually became the backbone of this publication.

Tarini Wadhawan, our program coordinator, quietly held the entire mentorship program together in the background, making sure the mentors and mentees stayed connected, check-ins were consistent, and the process remained supported. Without her work, we wouldn’t have had anything to reflect on at all.

And then there’s Archana Sapra — my closest friend and co-founder of A4A. From the start, she gave me complete freedom to pursue this strange, slow, solar-powered idea under the A4A banner. There were no questions — only support, laughter, encouragement, and the occasional perfectly timed eye-roll. Archana helped build the mentorship model we now run, shaped the philosophy behind the program, and ensured it could function effectively in real-time. Even while Jagadeesh and I ran around trying to decode logs and permissions, she was there, grounded, amused, and always part of the journey.

And finally, there was AI.

Yes, I know. It feels strange to list a machine here. But ChatGPT was one of the most consistent collaborators I had throughout this process. I asked questions, got confused, and asked again. It helped me troubleshoot Lighttpd errors, generate HTML scaffolding, understand tunnel configs, and even dither my images usingditherit.com. It was like having a tireless, judgment-free assistant — one that also reminded me, in its limitations, how human this process is.

Of course, there’s irony in all of this. A project focused on sustainability was enabled by a high-energy AI model trained on vast datasets. That something powered by the sun was built with the help of systems that consume more electricity in an hour than this Raspberry Pi might use in a year.

But that’s part of the story, too.

This report, this server, this site — none of it happened in isolation.

It was built through friendships, mentorship, failures, and curiosity.

It was built together.